


It's Still You

by ShadowPorpoise



Series: Underfakers [1]
Category: Dreamtale - Fandom, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Body Horror, Brotherly Angst, Bullying, Captivity, Chess, Dream is a kid, Dreamtale, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Enemies to Friends, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Nightmare is a kid, No Plot/Plotless, No Romance, No Smut, Not Canon Compliant, Past Tense, Physical Abuse, Possession, Present Tense, Psychological Drama, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Sharing a Body, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Swearing, Violence, Weird Plot Shit, some tags might change, this isn't anything like Undertree but please enjoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 25
Words: 26,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23899465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowPorpoise/pseuds/ShadowPorpoise
Summary: There was one and now there's two... Is it you or is it you?Nightmare isn't Nightmare anymore. Or is he?
Relationships: Dream & Neil, Ink & error, Nightmare & Dream, Nightmare & Neil, Nightmare & Nightmare, Sans & Sans (Undertale), dream & blue, ink & dream, nightmare & blue
Series: Underfakers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754032
Comments: 157
Kudos: 216





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I came upon [this post](https://jokublog.tumblr.com/post/169502295744/i-get-many-messages-every-day-from-people-who-say) concerning Nightmare's character on Joku's blog and was struck with an idea. That's not to say this story will align with every element of the Dreamtale canon, not at all. Also this is nothing like my previous Dreamtale story, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. ^-^
> 
> DreamTale, Dream!Sans, Nightmare!Sans, and Neil created by Joku  
> Ink!Sans created by Comyet  
> Error!Sans created by CrayonQueen

In his mind, Nightmare is the same as ever. Not that he was ever anything particularly good. Or good at all, really. He was made of not-good things, of negative energy, negative feelings, and not a soul would let him forget it. Even Mother told him so, only she didn’t say it like they did, and knock him off his feet. Mother couldn’t knock him down or even box his ears like the mothers from the village, because Mother was a tree and trees don’t hit, though they’ll trip you if you don’t watch. Nightmare doesn’t think that Mother would’ve hit him though, even if she could. Even if he was bad. Even his name means something bad, something scary that people hate, so there’s no reason he should be any different.

And he isn’t, in his mind. Any different, that is. His clothes are just the same, the crown is on his head, his bones are just as clean, and both his eyes work fine. He could always see a lot that others didn’t, like people’s thoughts coming out their ears and in their eyes, ugly thoughts he can’t describe. But Nightmare’s thoughts were always his and no one else’s, until they ripped right out his back and through one eye like all the others’. But still he holds his ground, still the same inside his head. That’s not him come out his eye or from his back, that’s just Sludge and Sludge might try to claim his head but he won’t let him take his mind, in his mind he’s just the same.

“Can’t argue with that,” Sludge tells him, like he said it out loud, like he can say anything out loud from way in here. “You haven’t changed even a little.” He’s leaning on one wall, or what would’ve been a wall if there was anything here but white, blank white space like the void they sometimes travel.

Nightmare knows he can’t mean anything good by that but if he asks he might find out, so he doesn’t and he doesn’t. Sludge might wear his face and grin his grin, but he’s dripping with his own filth.

“Not too chatty, huh?” Sludge flicks slime and shrugs his shoulders. “That’s alright. I can hear ya just fine anyways.”

And maybe that’s how they all felt, when Nightmare saw their filth and in their head. Did he look like this, to them, when he would listen to their thoughts and they would realize that he could?

“Nah, you looked a whole lot nicer and they still hated you. What, did you think that’d be an excuse? Still tryna reason your way out of hating them back, is that it? What, they couldn’t possibly hate you and know what they were doing, right?”

And all at once he’s in his face, he _is_ his face and they’re the same, they’re the same and they weren’t different, not before or even now. A voice like nails on a chalkboard, gravelly and high. “Did _you_ know what you were doing? When you ripped them from their bodies?”

And it’s no, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t care, only leave him in his head for just a while, just a moment, just a second more, oh please, those aren’t his hands, those aren’t his feet, those aren’t his _eyes,_ oh god his eyes, those aren’t his memories and his thoughts, oh please just go and never ask me, never tell me that again and I’ll be good, I’ll stay here and you can live, don’t mind me I won’t fight, I won’t argue, please just go.

Nightmare - no, Sludge grins and then steps back, out of his thoughts, out of his mind, out of his face.

“Sure, I’ll leave ya alone. I’ll leave ya alone as long as you want.” He straightens and makes as though to walk away. But at the last minute he turns, and one eye gleams neon blue over his tentaclely shoulder. “But _you_ won’t.” And then he’s gone.


	2. Chapter 2

“Do you ever hear voices in your head?”

Dream glanced up from where he was busy coloring in a picture of the sun. In yellow. On yellow canvas. He wasn’t a very good artist, mostly because he rarely sat still long enough to get any better at it. Still, Nightmare never said anything against it. Mostly because if Dream was drawing, it meant they were together, at the tree and not in town, and Dream might even listen to him read aloud if he asked. That’s what they’d been doing, reading, until Nightmare lost his place for the fifth time and Dream didn’t even notice.

Now he was biting one end of his crayon, just like Nightmare told him not to do, and even frowning a little - a rare sight. “You mean like… how Mother used to talk to us?”

No…. Not quite. Mother didn’t know what was in his head before he told her. Or at least, he didn’t think so.

“Oh! It might be your conscience!” Dream’s starry eye-lights sparkled.

“My conscience?”

“Yeah like… when you want to do something bad, only you feel like you shouldn’t. Or when you feel like you _should_ do something good.”

Nightmare’s head hurt. Whenever Dream used terms like _good_ and _bad_ in this sort of context _,_ he became hopelessly lost. By the time he finished rearranging things in his mind so that they actually made _sense_ , they usually didn’t. “But… your conscience is still _you,_ isn’t it?”

Dream’s eyes returned to normal as he bent once more over his work. “I guess so, yeah, a part of you.”

That wasn’t it then. You didn’t talk to your conscience. At least, not so it could hear and talk back. Or get annoyed when you ignored it. He’d figured out pretty quickly that the dull buzzing in his ears, the high, almost imperceptible ringing wasn’t just his imagination, that it only happened when he didn’t listen. Or show he was listening.

That’s how it started, actually. All the trouble, in the village. When they saw him talking to himself, whispering or grinning or gesturing with his hands when no one was there. No one they could see, anyway. No one _he_ could see, either. But it was real, this someone, whom he called the voice, in his head. It had been with him from the beginning. For as long as he could think. Though he never _did_ think anything of it, of the voice, since they could always hear Mother in their heads before, and that was normal. But then the villagers started noticing. And called it the devil. Called _him_ the devil, for talking to it.

Nightmare didn’t know who the devil was or why he’d want to talk to him. But he figured if the villagers hated the devil so much, then maybe he was lonely, and could use a friend. Maybe he was _bad_ , and couldn’t help it. Maybe they would hit him, and call him names until he cried, until he faded right away into nothing. And now you couldn’t see him, only hear him if he wanted. So Nightmare went right along talking to the devil, only more discrete. And that’s why he got mad sometimes, the devil voice, when Nightmare didn’t answer, and made that ringing in his head.

It was ringing now, while Nightmare tried to concentrate, to listen to the teacher. His name was Neil, and he was a cat. He wasn’t mean, this Neil. Only a little flighty. And unobservant. It was his idea for them to come to school at all, to give them books and teach them how to read them. His son came too, and was always a favorite. He and Dream were set to clean the chalk board after class today. They were sitting together and giggling already, near the front. Nightmare tried not to be bothered. Dream made friends easily, with anyone who wanted to, and some who didn’t. As long as they left him alone, Dream’s friends, Nightmare didn’t mind if he had them. And if Skip was staying to wipe off the chalk board, that meant he wouldn’t be able to say anything, to do anything to Nightmare before he left.

Except Dream was still back in there with him.

“He can walk home by himself, right?” Nightmare muttered.

“Oh, finally decided to talk to me, huh?”

Nightmare didn’t need to talk out loud in order for the voice to hear him. It was just a habit, from when he thought he did. “Shh. I’m listening.”

“Yeah, well, while you’re listening I’m over here dying of boredom. The way that cat drones on?”

“Stay home next time, then.”

Nightmare could hear Skip and Dream laughing from inside the little schoolhouse. Footsteps. And then Skip was there, right in front of him and staring. He was orange and white, with yellow, snake-like eyes, and whiskers about a foot long.

His tail twitched. Once. And Nightmare looked at the ground. Sometimes, if you ignored them, they’d go away. Or get more angry.

“What’s the matter, did I interrupt you or something, Jinx?”

Jinx. It was a nickname Nightmare tried to own, so they wouldn’t use it anymore. That’s what happened in books sometimes. It became a compliment, the insult, if you bore it with pride. But it didn’t seem to be working very well for him. “I’m just waiting for my brother.”

Skip jerked his head back, toward the open door. “He’ll be a while. He was good enough to do my part too, since I had some stuff to do. He’s real nice, that Dream.”

Nightmare couldn’t argue with that. He started to step around the other, toward the relative safety of the empty hallway. “I’ll just… give him a hand with it then.”

And he was up against the wall. With Skip’s breath in his face. “You’ll keep your hands to yourself if you know what’s good for you. We don’t need any of your little spells and curses around here.”

“That was quick,” said the voice, said the devil, and Nightmare almost laughed. Big mistake.

“What’s the matter, Jinx, something funny to you? Something about my face amuses you, is that it?”

Mildly. When Skip got angry, his whiskers twitched and he almost hissed instead of spoke. “Not really.”

Skip’s eyes narrowed as he struggled to discern whether this response signified hostility or submission. The decision was made for him with the slam of a door from inside. He let go and Nightmare landed in a heap on the ground. “I don’t wanna catch you hanging around out here by yourself anymore.”

Who else was he supposed to hang around with?

Nightmare waited until he was out of sight before rolling his eyes.

“Night? What happened?”

“Uh, nothing, bro, I just… sitting, while I waited.”

Dream’s head tilted. “In the mud?”

Nightmare got up hurriedly. “Didn’t notice.”

Dream didn’t, either. Notice. The way his hands shook as they walked home. The way he waited until he knew Dream was asleep before finally climbing over between the biggest, more comfortable roots and curling up on his side. The stars winked out at him from the dark expanse of the sky, taunting him with the possibility, the knowledge of other worlds that might be kinder than this one. Maybe it was just him that wasn’t kind, that wasn’t nice. After all, everyone said Dream was nice, and they loved him - even Skip. Maybe if he’d kept moving, kept walking until he got home, Skip wouldn’t have noticed him, wouldn’t have gotten so angry. It was his school, sort of. The guardians were only guests. Nightmare wouldn’t like it very much if Skip were to loiter around their tree. Was it so terrible he didn’t want Nightmare doing the same thing, doing nothing while everyone else did whateverit was they were supposed to do?

“After all, Satan finds work for idle hands!” the voice intoned loudly, in his best villager accent, and Nightmare snickered. Laughed until he cried. He’d been strangely quiet since they left town. After all, the voice couldn’t help him when stuff like that happened. He could only seethe, silently. And say things like this when it was all over.

“Next time we should rearrange his face. Put an eye where his mouth is. Take his mouth clean off.”

Nightmare was still giggling. And sniffling. “Stop it.”

“Yeah that’s what he’ll say, but we won’t, we’ll just keep tearing him up until he can’t say anything at all.”

The voice might not be able to protect him, but he was _there_. He was funny, and he was nice. The others might not see it, might not like it, but he was the nicest one of all, a whole lot nicer than they were.And he never ran out of ideas. He laid out about a hundred more of them before Nightmare fell asleep. Bad ideas. All about doing mean things to good, kind people.

No, the voice wasn’t very much like a conscience at all.


	3. Chapter 3

“What are you doing?”

Dream had himself braced between the trunk and one of its lowest branches, reaching up for a golden apple. His fingers could only just barely brush the surface at this level. “I’m… trying to…” With one last lunge he caught hold of it, and they both came down in a heap. Right where Nightmare had been standing.

“Oops! Sorry!” Dream yanked him up to a sitting position and Nightmare blinked, dazed and startled. At the look on his face, Dream started to giggle and flung his arms around him so that they tumbled right back down again. Dream’s spontaneous hugs were as reflexive and unpredictable as anything else he did. What started out as an embrace quickly turned into a brawl, with Dream squealing something about the apple and holding it out of the way as best he could and Nightmare attempting to regain his feet with no little difficulty.

When at last he managed it, they were both sweaty and dirty and in decidedly unsuitable condition for school. “What did you even need it for?” Nightmare panted, bending to pick it up where it rolled lazily on the ground.

“Don’t!”

Nightmare snatched his hand back as though he’d been burned. He’d never heard Dream use that tone before. His brother was staring, wide eyed and breathless as he went to retrieve the little fruit, scooping it up so carefully it might have been made of glass.

“You’re not… we’re not supposed to touch…”

Ah. He’d forgotten. It’s not like they’d had much opportunity to handle the fruits at all. Most of them hung dangerously out of reach, as they’d just discovered. “Well keep a hold on it then,” he muttered, strangely irritable.

“I’m sorry,” Dream said again, in a rather small voice, and clutched the thing to his chest. “But it goes right back. On the tree, I mean. I just need it for today. It’s show-and-tell, you know.”

Nightmare didn’t know. That must’ve come up while he was busy reading in class yesterday. “Right. Well you better go, then. I’m gonna… look for something.”

Dream’s eyes softened and his smile turned to something worried, almost pitying, the kind of look he’d give someone in the village who was just wanting to leech some positivity off him. Nightmare decided he didn’t like it. “Go on,” he repeated. “I’ll catch up.”

“What are you even gonna bring?” the voice asked skeptically when Dream had gone, skipping a little under the morning sun.

“I don’t know. We’re already strange enough. Might as well just bring ourselves.” But Dream was bringing an apple, and he’d look silly if he showed up with nothing now. He glanced up at his side of the tree dubiously.

“You can’t be serious.” The voice was almost laughing. “I mean, that’ll go over well, won’t it. ‘Here, look, I’ve got a piece of all your suffering.’ ”

Nightmare, who had been busy trying to get a foothold in one gnarled bend in the trunk, skidded back down to the ground. “Well what do you suggest, then? I’m all out of ideas.”

“I _suggest_ letting it go and staying out of the way. You know they’re just gonna find some means of turning this into a method of torture. Just watch, somebody’ll bring a knife or something and you’ll be the perfect subject for demonstration. And that stupid cat won’t even notice, he’ll just blink a few times and tell you to raise your hand before screaming and that dying is against the rules.”

Nightmare wasn’t listening. He’d wandered around to the other side of the tree and was gazing longingly up into the branches. Before either of them knew it he was climbing, just the same as Dream did, only he was a little taller and he could reach. If he dared.

The voice was quiet.

“What, got something to say? I’m listening.”

“…”

He could practically hear the silence. He sighed, still poised between the branches, and studied his own hands. Waiting. They really weren’t any different than Dream’s hands. Just as bony and white, maybe a little bigger.

“Why does this matter to you so much?” the voice said then. Quiet and low.

“I’m not a jinx,” Nightmare blurted, and the tears were gathering in his sockets. He dashed them away furiously before they could spill. “And why are you even asking, anyway? You can see inside my head, can’t you? You should be telling me. Telling me what’s so wrong with me that no one likes me, or why I should care.”

The voice had no answer for him.

So Nightmare reached once more for the fruit, the golden one nearest him, and only when he had it all but in his grasp did the voice speak again.

“Wait.”

Nightmare sighed. “Not you too. What do you think is gonna happen? That I’ll… ruin it somehow?”

“Do whatever you want,” the voice snapped. Sounding more angry than Nightmare had ever heard him. “Just don’t blame me if they get even worse after this.”

He wouldn’t. He promised. And when he grabbed the first apple and nothing happened, no static shock or anything else, Nightmare decided he’d get a few more, and maybe a whole basket full because he could handle them just as well as Dream, and pretty soon they’d all know it. And they did, at first. When he showed up tired and grinning with that basket over his arm and Dream stricken with panic and all but pushing him back toward the doorway, trying to take the basket from him and demanding what happened with his face all red and worried, not like the very soul of positivity at all. But Nightmare had had enough.

“Will you calm down,” he hissed, wrenching his arm from Dream’s grasp while the rest of the class stared in shock, uncomprehending.

And then Neil broke a ruler right in half, and told them all to sit down and pay attention in a tone he’d never used to before with any of the children.

But even Dream defied him now. “We’ll be back, teacher,” he gasped, and dragged them both out of the school. It was dark outside, not like when he’d first come, and the wind had picked up something awful. Dust and debris blustered by on it, and Nightmare had to hold the basket tightly in order that it wouldn’t blow away.

“Nothing happened!” he told his brother with a sort of fierce pride he couldn’t keep down. “I got them all down. Well, almost all of them, and they’re just fine, not a thing wrong. I told you.”

But Dream wasn’t listening to him. He was busy staring, staring down at the basket with something like horror on his perpetually-pleasant face, and one hand at his mouth. And that’s when Nightmare noticed.

“…Shit,” said the voice. With a strained laugh. “Uhm?”

They were a marbly golden brown, every single one of them, and swiftly churning into a more solid, definitive black.

Too late, much too late, Nightmare dropped them. Backed up, almost tripping as they rolled about his feet. “I didn’t…. I….” He didn’t what? _Mean_ to? What did he mean to do? He’d forgotten.

They were watching. From the doorway. All of them. And not just the school’s doorway. All the doors on the street stood open with their owners in the gaps, livid with bloodlust. He could see it, he could feel it, he could _smell_ it like he’d smelt it plenty of times before, on Skip’s breath and in all of them when they hurt him, when they wanted to make him hurt more only they stopped. And this time they wouldn’t stop, he knew it as surely as he was standing here, barely, so he turned, dizzy and stumbling, for the path out of town at a full sprint, and only one stricken, piercing voice calling after him.

It was only when he reached the tree that he realized he’d left the basket. He wouldn’t be putting those apples back on the tree, and they wouldn’t get any better if he did. Already the others were turned, the tree half sagging with unnatural weight and the wind howling, moaning around his head.

“Did… Did you know this would happen?” was all he could say, because he wanted to blame somebody, have somebody else to take the fall with besides himself.

But the voice didn’t answer that. It came cold in his mind, like a last judgment before the sentence. “They’re coming.”

Nightmare whirled and he could see them too, perhaps every monster in town, there were so many. He pressed himself back against the trunk, which groaned and quaked beneath his weight. “What do I do,” he stuttered. “What do I do, please help me,” he whispered, more a prayer than a request, and the voice answered. The voice told him what he must do and he did it this time, he didn’t wait, not even when Dream came charging ahead of the rest and calling to him, calling for him to wait and it would be alright, he would stop them. Dream hadn’t ever stopped them, and he wouldn’t now.

The fruit was sweet like any other. The juice ran down his chin as he reached for another and another. He wasn’t sure how many he ate, only that eventually the voice told him it was enough. “You know what I think?” it said then, and it was closer, it was higher and louder and almost too harsh for him to listen to. “I think it’s time to rearrange some faces.”


	4. Chapter 4

“How long has he been like that?”

The reddish cat monster scratches at his chin as though struggling remember. “Eleven months, two weeks and three days,” he says at last, and smiles ruefully at the wondering exclamation of the other. “Lost my boy the same day. Not so easy to forget, that way.”

Ink doesn’t usually involve himself with the inconsequential dramas of any one particular world. It isn’t his place to make sure every member of the multiverse is _happy_ , or even living. A story isn’t a story without a little heartache, after all. But it isn’t one without joy, either. And that’s why Dreamtale, and the possibility of its impending destruction, concerned him enough to make a preemptive visit.

He glances down at his scarf and its endless scribblings, wondering briefly if he’d remember a day like that, too, even without a reminder. But he quickly dismisses the thought. There’s not much point in imagining you’ve suffered when there’s no way to find out. He wastes no effort on sympathetic looks and sets his teacup down with a decisive clack. “Well! Thank you for your time. I’d better get going.”

Neil gets to his feet quickly and follows him to the door. “If there’s anything else I can do for you, let me know. I don’t know where you’ve come from, stranger, but it’s a long time since I’ve had any company.”

Ink _does_ know how that feels. He smiles a little and bows. “If I have any more questions, I’ll be sure to direct them to you. You’ve been very helpful.”

He leaves the cat monster standing alone in the entryway of a very modest cottage at the edge of the rise. Not a soul lives in town anymore, and Ink has no intention of going that way. Whoever wasn’t killed has long since moved away, and only Neil remains to keep watch over the hill, speckled all over with little graves, and one tiny stone statue near the rotting ruin of the tree itself. It fascinates Ink, this statue. So lifelike and still at the same time. He sits before it, crosslegged, with his back to the fallen trunk. Ink doesn’t mind bugs, or dirt. Most of the time he has some kind of paint in his clothes, anyway, and one permanent smudge on his face he waited too long to try and clean.

“Well, what do you think?” Ink asks his stony companion, hunching forward on his elbows. The little face is clearly tracked with tears, and its eyes plead silently. For its life? Ink isn’t sure. “I guess I owe a whole lot to you, don’t I? All of us do.” Ink never felt much of anything, positive or otherwise, without his paints. But what would his paints be, if not for this little skeleton, the one they all call Dream? Within this statue, this child, lies the whole of positive emotion. Would the whole multiverse become colorless, without him? No, not entirely. There’d still be blue, and purple… And plenty of others without a match, without a balance. Ink doesn’t think he’d like that very much. In fact, he’d be very worried right now if he hadn’t forgotten to refill on lavender. So instead, he reaches out and pats the thing on the head. “I don’t know if you can feel this, kid, but I know what it’s like if you can’t.” He pauses, uncertain whether or not to continue. “So… so just hang in there. Because we need you. And… we won’t let you down. I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please check out PureDragon's [beautiful portrayal](https://slepyfibre.tumblr.com/post/618006439946010624/so-i-drew-a-scene-from-shadowporpoises-fanfic) of this scene. Thank you so much.


	5. Chapter 5

Nightmare is alone. He can’t say for how long he’s been alone, only that after he told Sludge to go, to get out of his head, he hasn’t seen him. Oh, he’s still _there,_ alright. Nightmare is the one who isn’t there, who doesn’t occupy his own body so much as just one small corner of his consciousness. But Nightmare won’t even peek out of the windows, out of his eye, as it were, to see what Sludge is up to. After all, it can’t be anything good. And he doesn’t want to remember it like it’s him, like he’s done it, since he already remembers doing and saying plenty he’d rather forget.

So he just sits there silently, making no move and listening to the silence. Sweet silence, he tells himself, as he’s never had in all his life. Sometimes he catches himself beginning a thought, even a word to no one in particular, before remembering there’s no one at all he wants to hear from and so he stops.

And he doesn’t hear from him. Not even that barely perceptible ringing sound that used to drive him so crazy, before. There are no obvious consequences for demanding his solitude, for ignoring the voice anymore, and he should be glad. But it stretches on and stretches on, the silence and the nothing, till he’s halfway made up his mind he doesn’t like being alone quite so much as he thought. And with that realization comes a desperation, a loathing at the only option, the only solution he will have to this terrifying void that has become his only haven from it, and not a haven but a prison in his own mind.

Nightmare is alone. He has always been alone, though he did not always know it. Even now he is mourning over phantoms, weeping at imagined rejection, the loss of what he never had. And still he reaches for it, still he calls for one who isn’t there, who was never there for him and only pretended, only talked like a friend, because at least he pretended, at least he made out he was a friend and didn’t push him, didn’t call him names until he cried, perhaps because he couldn’t but he didn’t, and now he could only he doesn’t, he leaves Nightmare alone and Nightmare doesn’t want to be alone, not anymore or he’ll go mad.

“All you had to do was call. Like, once. This is ridiculous.”

Nightmare knows that, he knows he’s pathetic and ridiculous and everything else, only he can’t help but laugh through his tears as he wipes them away, sitting up in the void that is his mind and smiling at the intruder, sludge or no sludge. “I’m s-sorry, I know you did it all for me, that you w-warned me not to and… and I…”

Sludge is rolling his one eye and resting his chin on his hand where he sits on… nothing. “Don’t bother with that. You’re as predictable as those brute villagers you hate so much. I needed a body and I got one, end of story.”

Nightmare’s face twists as he struggles to make sense of what is being told him. “But… But you…”

Sludge waves his words away with one dripping tentacle and gets up. “Doesn’t matter now. All that matters is you’re still here and I am too, and it wouldn’t matter to me if you weren’t, but you are so we might as well make it easier on ourselves.”

Nightmare is hopelessly lost. “I… I don’t…”

“Oh my god.” Sludge sticks one slimy hand in his direction. “You can stay in here if you want, but if you’re gonna come out do it now because we’re currently in a very compromised position.”

“I… what do you mean?” Nightmare splutters, gaping at the proffered hand.

“I mean we’ve got a very unpredictable squid on our trail and his emotions are all over the place. And I’d rather not be unconscious when he finds us. But look at me, busy playing nursemaid as usual to a snot-nosed baby with rejection issues.”

Nightmare doesn’t remember taking Sludge’s hand. He doesn’t even understand half of what the other just said, he only knows that he’s returning to his body for the first time in, what, months? And he’s a little rusty. Not that Sludge gives him much opportunity to do anything, only to puke as his body moves on its own, climbing to its feet without his say.

“Shit,” his own voice speaks aloud from his mouth, and he retches again. “If you’re gonna be sick you can go right back where you came from.”

“I’m not trying to be,” Nightmare tries to say, but the words come out blurry, and he - no, Sludge - sighs.

“Haven’t you learned anything yet? Don’t try and talk out loud, I can hear you either way.”

 _“Right,”_ Nightmare tries and Sludge nods their head.

“If you weren’t too stubborn to glance out once in a while, you’d know what was going on already. As it is, I’ll catch you up as we go. I didn’t plan on this but two heads are better than one so maybe you can think of something.”

Is this how the voice felt, before? Inhabiting a mind that wasn’t his own, only this time it’s a body, and it should be his, it should be Nightmare’s to control only he can’t, not unless Sludge lets him.

“Yeah except you made a lot of shitty decisions, if you remember.”

Oh, right. Sludge can hear his thoughts, so it’s not the same at all. They’ve warped to about five different worlds in the last ten seconds. If he hadn’t puked everything up already, he’d have done it by now. “ _What are we running from, anyway?”_

“I told you.” Sludge warps again. “The self-proclaimed ‘Guardian of the AUs.’ Basically a delusional, narcissistic fanatic who gets in other people’s business, but only when it suits him.”

Right. _“And… uhm… why does he wanna bother with us?”_

“I commissioned the destroyer to take out our home world and apparently he’s got a problem with it.”

He… what? “But what about Dream?” Nightmare says it aloud before he thinks.

Sludge wrenches his voice back. “You should’ve worried about Dream a long time ago if you were going to. This is the easiest way to get rid of him without a fight.”

Nightmare’s mind is reeling. Sludge doesn’t give him any time to think as he turns and skips a couple of more words before coming to rest in one of the many Underfell timelines, leaning back against some wall or another in Snowdin. It’s easy, to stay here. So many negative feelings.

“Should’ve thought of this a long time ago, actually,” Sludge pants, and Nightmare can feel himself readying for combat, summoning all four tentacles and bracing for an attack. “Instead of just leaving him there to rot. Or, not, since he hasn’t changed in like a year. Would you pull yourself together? You’re an ungodly mess of emotion right now.”

He is. At this moment, he wants nothing more than to retreat into the blankest recesses of his mind again, and be nothing, think nothing for maybe another year, another lifetime until it stops, until it’s all over and he doesn’t have to deal with it.

“Do whatever you want, just don’t get in the way. I promised I’d keep this guy busy while the destroyer did the job, but it’s gonna be a lot longer than I thought since he’s got like a list? I don’t even know. I didn’t expect the _squid_ to come after _me._ ”

Nightmare isn’t paying much attention. A blur of hazy memories swims within his mind. Burning rage, a severed limb, blackened hands, dripping slime, stony tears and blood, blood, blood…

“Heya.” And a very… colorful individual is standing before them in the street. He blinks, once, and Nightmare thinks of something. “Can… we talk for a minute?”

Sludge seems to consider. It isn’t what they expected, either of them, but it beats a fight any day, particularly one that could _last_ for several days, depending. Unless it’s a trick. 

The newcomer grasps something like a massive paintbrush in both hands like it’s a club, only he doesn’t swing. And his smile seems earnest enough, though the feelings behind it… _“There’s something very wrong,”_ Nightmare gasps.

“You can,” says Sludge, ignoring him completely.

The… squid lets out a breath and lowers that brush just a fraction. “You’re Nightmare, right? The guardian of negative feelings? So you should realize as much as anyone… what’s at stake here.”

“If you’ve gotta point to make, make it.”

“Why, you got somewhere to be?” He tilts his head quizzically. “What’s the rush?”

There is no rush, if what Sludge said is true. The longer they keep this person here, the better. For his plan, that is. Nightmare tries not to think about it.

The squid sighs and shrugs his shoulders, edging a bit closer from the left. Sludge stiffens but doesn’t retreat. “I don’t think you’re thinking this through, Nightmare.”

It grates on his ears, that name. And the way Sludge answers to it. He’s half tempted to speak, to correct it before Sludge can stop him, but Sludge sees even that thought, even that impulse and puts a stop to it.

“What’s going to happen if the positive feelings vanish from the multiverse? Do you think you’ll be _glad_ about it?” The stranger’s grin turns mocking and a little skeptical before he stops and whirls around like he’s forgotten where he was going. “Welp. Guess we’ll find out. See ya, Nightmare!” And with that he’s gone, and Sludge didn’t even move to stop him.

They stand for a moment, still breathing heavy and sagging against that wall. It’s an alleyway, complete with dumpsters and a mangey cat.

“Shit,” Sludge says at last, and wipes at his forehead. “We have to go back.”


	6. Chapter 6

At some point it started to rain. Great sheets of gray hanging from the sky. And the steady, isolated drippings of the eaves. Ink watches placidly from the open doorway. He’s not sure when he stopped caring, perched on that wobbly footstool and looking, waiting, but not seeing, not thinking about anything. He’s never had very much trouble with that, thinking, no matter how he feels or how he doesn’t. But now he doesn’t want to, doesn’t feel like it, and so he just sits and thinks about not thinking until he’s not.

“You’re a… a skeleton too?”

He didn’t hear the steps. The child has snuck up on him, and radiates a soft golden light even under that rough, ratty blanket he tugs around himself at the cat monster’s request. He’s still shivering, even with that shroud of the sun pulled up over his head beneath the earthly covering.

Ink smiles at him. “Yep.”

Dream’s eyes are wide and wondering as curiosity gets the better of his nerves, and he approaches, cautiously. They’re nearly on a level with Ink straddling that stool and hunched a bit. This close he can see the sunken shadows beneath Dream’s eyes, a symptom of spent tears and weariness. “Are you a guardian, too?” the little skeleton asks hoarsely, and Ink thinks for a minute.

“You could say that. Though I’m not doing a very good job of it right now.”

“Of feelings?”

Ink’s mouth twists ruefully and he ducks his head. “Hardly.”

“But…” A tiny hand is reaching for the brightest vials, near his shoulder. Ink should be alarmed; perhaps he forgot to take purple. But Dream does not try to take his paints, or even to touch them. He only frowns a little before drawing back and plunking himself down on the floor. “Do you… feel all those emotions at once?” Even the thought seems to weary him further, and Ink tries not to laugh.

“Not really. I mean, I _can_ feel them all,” he adds with some pride, “When I take them. So I try to keep them level in case I need to.”

Dream looks even more confused. He hugs his knees to his chest and glances out at the rain. Ink looks too. It’s the same as ever. Cold and gray.

“Is he almost ready? Your…”

“He’s not my dad. And I don’t know.”

Ink nods slowly. Frisk will be here soon. To take them. And then Ink can go, can get on with his job and stop obsessing over this one world while so many others crumble.

“So you…”

Ink turns. Dream still isn’t looking at him, but something seems to have dawned on him, as he glares with growing intensity out into that storm.

“So you get to choose, how you feel?”

Ink doesn’t answer him. But even that is answer enough.

Dream huffs a little and closes his eyes. “That’s lucky.”


	7. Chapter 7

Nightmare hasn’t spoken since that day. He retreated back into the nothingness not long after and now he just sits there and pouts. Sludge would sift through his mind for the whys of it, only he’s met with something like a blank white wall when he tries. Nightmare has finally managed to shut him out.

 _Sludge_. He isn’t sure when he started referring to himself, mentally, by that name. An insult owned as Nightmare never could. Sludge does a lot of things Nightmare wanted to do, and many he pretended he didn’t. Truth be told, Sludge had always _called_ himself Nightmare, before, if only in his mind. Until the other saw fit to differentiate between them in the most obnoxious way, and now he’s just Sludge, both to Nightmare and to himself.

But he isn’t bothered by that so much. What does bother him is the tension in his own consciousness, this isolated fragment of his mind that Nightmare has walled off. Or at least, that’s what he tells himself as he breaks through the outer defenses without much trouble and plunks himself down before the other, studying his face rather than his thoughts. It isn’t his real face, naturally. That is covered and dripping over with sludge, actual sludge, with one eye-socket all filled up with it. No, this is simply the face Nightmare assigns to himself, imagines for himself and so it is there, in this corner of his consciousness that Sludge lets him have. Nightmare still hasn’t hardly furnished the place. It is as blank and white as the last time Sludge was here.

“What do you want?” Nightmare surprises him with the question. He’s sitting all hunched over and hugging his knees to his chest. That crown still perches boldly on his head as though in defiance of Sludge’s choice to cast away the real one. Sludge has never been surprised by anything Nightmare says, as he usually reads it in his mind beforehand. He hopes he won’t have to get too used to it.

“To know what you’re thinking,” Sludge admits with a shrug, deciding honesty is the best policy, under these circumstances. After all, he won’t know if Nightmare is being dishonest. So he’d rather not get started in that direction.

Nightmare is smiling. The sardonic one he pretends not to have, the one Sludge makes all the time now he has a face to make it with. “Not very fun is it. To be kept in the dark.”

Sludge thinks a moment, rolling his one, imagined eye-light up into his head. “Irony detected.”

Nightmare giggles despite himself and wipes at his eyes. “Making me laugh isn’t gonna work,” he says stubbornly.

“Not trying to make you do anything. I haven’t ever tried to make you do anything.”

“That’s not true.” And it slips. His hold. His resolve. And Sludge sees inside to the chaos of his thoughts for just a brief moment, to the boiling rage and the single coherent word where it repeats over and over again within his head.

_L̴̩̖̈́͠i̸͖͋̃a̴̢̫̼̽̔̕r̵̘̄͝.̸̦̯̾͛_

And perhaps Nightmare realizes his mistake, that Sludge knows now, that there’s no more point in pretending, because he starts to cry in earnest, tears of pure hatred Sludge could feel a galaxy away, wall or no wall. “You lied to me!” he sobs, and makes as though to shove Sludge over, only stops just short of doing it and collapses to his hands and knees instead. “You said you couldn’t change him back.” This last is barely more than a defeated whisper.

Sludge averts his gaze and does his best not to shrug. “I did change him back,” he retorts calmly. “Dunno what you’re so upset about.”

Nightmare shakes his head and starts to laugh again, ugly laughter to rival even that first day, under the tree. Nightmare still insists it was Sludge who laughed back then and not he, and Sludge has given up arguing over it. There is no room for argument now, though, as Nightmare heaves with giddy, scornful cackles and Sludge only watches, bemused. “You’re such a jerk,” Nightmare says at last, and Sludge raises one muddy eyebrow.

“Think we’ve covered that by now. Anything else?”

“Yeah.” Nightmare takes a moment to pull himself together before sitting up, facing Sludge calmly from where he kneels in the nothingness. “Stop using my name.”

“I don’t.”

“Yes you do, you still use it when… like when that squid talked to you.”

“I can’t help what he says.”

“You could… ugh, never mind.” Nightmare sighs and sits still for a moment, so Sludge listens to the silence. He hasn’t exactly heard much of it before now.

“Well, what are we gonna do?” Nightmare breaks it at last, and Sludge realizes he doesn’t know. “Could we…” Nightmare ventures upon receiving no answer, “Go and see Dream? Just to make sure he’s alright?”

“We couldn’t get in to where he is.”

Nightmare frowns a little but doesn’t argue. He’s probably used to it - being shut out where Dream is accepted. But that doesn’t mean it makes him any happier. “Maybe someday, when he leaves there.”

Sludge has no interest in meeting with Dream any time soon. He won’t seal him again, not after such a close call with Error, not to mention Nightmare’s little meltdown just now. He imagines he’ll take on the very ignoble task of feeding off petty emotions and wreaking havoc where he may, all without any overarching goal beyond spreading general negativity enough to keep Dream busy without ever permanently damaging anything.

He sighs and settles himself more comfortably within the nothingness. Nightmare stiffens in surprise when he produces a red and black chessboard out of nowhere and begins to set it up.

“Wanna play a game?” Sludge asks him in the most disinterested voice he can muster. Because, why not? Best get used to the mundanity.


	8. Chapter 8

All Sanses share certain similarities. But there is a special kinship between Dream and Blue, the bright, energetic little skeleton who served as the inspiration, the base for the guardians’ creation. So it should come as no surprise that when one saw the other, alone beneath that ever-overcast sky and crying golden tears with one tiny index finger pressed against his teeth as though to forestall, to prevent the inevitable sobs, he rushed to his side. This particular Blue came into existence not long before Dream did, so they are on a level and all but identical as they stare into one another’s eyes, the golden and the blue, blue and not purple. Perhaps it is shock that slows Dream’s tears, that swallows his eye-lights into nothing at the sight. But Blue catches hold of Dream’s face and yanks it up close, examining those empty sockets closely in search of their lights and, finding none, he blinks worriedly, making hopeful stars of his own. “Why are are you crying?” he demands, with a concern that is almost angry, almost intimidating as he pulls Dream close without a thought, as no one thought to do before save his brother, who likely wouldn’t think to do it now. “Don’t you know you’re safe here.”

And perhaps Dream does know that now, in his arms, though it only makes him cry harder.

“Don’t worry,” Blue tells him patiently, and makes to drag him back across the street, leading him up onto the opposite sidewalk, all the while clutching him to his chest. “You can come over to my house until you figure it out! My brother won’t mind.”

Papyrus never was very good at telling his brother no. “Where’d you find him, Blue?” he asks gently,cautiously as he settles them on the lumpy sofa and tucks the throw around their shoulders. Omega is still a little drafty at the best of times. They haven’t quite figured out how to regulate the seasons.

“Just down the street!” Blue informs him cheerfully, like Dream is some sort of stray cat he managed to pick up. “He was alone and he was crying and so I told him he could stay with us.”

Papyrus scratches at his skull with a baffled sigh. “Right. Well… wait here, I’ll get… hot chocolate or something.” He does so more to clear his head than anything else. He overslept again, and even here he doesn’t like it when Blue goes out alone. Mostly because he never knows what he’ll bring back. Dogs, birds, rabbits… Blue has a nurturing streak that Papyrus is very proud of, and tries to encourage. But this is the first time he’s brought home another _monster,_ particularly one like that. He thought at first it was an alternate Blue and tried to explain, as best he could, that they’d have to send the little fellow back to his own brother. But Blue only clutched his new friend tighter, glaring up with open defiance and words to make his soul go cold. “His brother’s gone, Papy.”

And now all Papyrus can see is what could have been, what would have been Blue had he gone through with it, had he taken his own life that day what seems like ages ago, and he isn’t sure he wants to forget anymore. He vows to get up earlier, to work harder, to _try_ harder even though he knows he never will, as he empties paper packets into microwaved water and heads back in the living room.

Blue is still speaking softly to their guest, but Dream isn’t speaking back. Papyrus sighs and pokes the half full mugs at them. Blue is generally more careful than he is, about spilling, but he isn’t so sure about the other. Dream surprises him by reaching up carefully with both hands and cradling the mug to his chest like some precious thing. He makes no move to sip it.

“Don’t you like hot chocolate?” Blue asks him and Dream looks startled, glancing down at his cup. For the first time since entering the house, he opens his mouth as though to speak. Only to close it again defeatedly.

Papyrus chuckles. “Bro, it’s alright. He doesn’t have to drink it if he doesn’t want to.”

“Thank you.” The voice is small, and distinctly measured. “I’d forgotten myself.”

Papyrus frowns. “It’s no problem. Mind telling me where you live? It’s getting late. Don’t want… anybody to worry.”

Dream looks up at him and smiles weakly. “I don’t think anybody will.”

Papyrus hunches forward where he perches on the coffee table, thoroughly dissatisfied with this response. “Do you live alone?” he presses.

Slowly, Dream shakes his head. “114 Elm,” he intones blankly, and Papyrus gets up. Normally he wouldn’t like to leave Blue alone, but he won’t be long.

It isn’t until he sees the cat monster standing in his doorway, fur matted and whiskers bent, wearing what looks like yesterdays clothes that he remembers. The rumors. About the newest edition to their little community, and his bedraggled companion. They come from a world with only a single timeline. No humans. No do-overs. And one infinitely important to the multiverse as a whole. Few haven’t heard of the trouble there during the past year, what with the ripples of calamity it struck throughout the other universes. His own timeline was erased in a fit of the destroyer’s rage nearly eight months ago, and he and Blue the only survivors. So he is not without sympathy as he takes in the sight of this uprooted, disheveled individual at 114 Elm, but Papyrus was never one to mince words.

“We’ve got your kid over at my place. Thought you’d wanna know. He seemed to think you wouldn’t worry but I chalk that up to how young he is. You wanna come get him now or should he stay over till tomorrow?”

For a moment, Neil looks utterly bewildered at what he has just been told. He sags a little in the doorway before shaking his head wearily as though to clear it. “He’s not my…”

Papyrus’ face hardens. “Really? That’s all you’re gonna say?” He laughs, but there’s no amusement in it. “Look, bud, I don’t know where you been or what you’ve seen. But the last thing that kid needs is one more person to abandon him. I don’t care if you think you’re not good enough, or if he doesn’t pat you on the back for it. You’re all he’s got left from his home world, so step up and be there, tomorrow, to pick him up. We’ll keep him till then.” He turns on his heel without waiting for an answer.

It’s been a long while since Papyrus pronounced judgement. He’s exhausted already, and he hasn’t even started on dinner yet. He’s surprised to find the couch empty when he gets in, and a little chatter of voices from the kitchen. Blue is explaining tacos to his new friend, and Dream is laughing. Laughing around the fresh tear tracks staining his cheeks.

“Brother!” Blue dives at him. “We’re making dinner!”

“Is that so?” Papyrus edges toward the oven, checking for open flames.

“Mhm! He’s never heard of _tacos_ , Papy, and so I’m gonna teach him!”

Papyrus eyes their little guest with new interest. Now he thinks of it, there is something different about him, an almost imperceptible golden aura and a strangely contagious smile, more catching even than Blue’s. But still those tears keep tracing their way down from his eyes and he wipes at them hurriedly when Papyrus looks.

“I’m… I’m sorry, I’m trying n-not to…”

Blue turns and flings his arms around Dream again, so that he nearly drops the recipe he’s been handed. “You don’t have to stop if you don’t want to,” Blue tells him, parroting his brother’s earlier sentiments with pride. “You can cry as long as you need. You’ll see him again, won’t he, Papy?”

Papyrus hunkers down before them and puts a hand on each their heads. “Blue, maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh, no!” Blue insists, tugging Dream close again, tight enough it must have hurt, only Dream doesn’t protest. “He already told me! And I told him his brother could be our brother, too, when he gets back.”

It’s something no villager back home would have considered saying to Dream. They were separate, they were different from the others. Dream didn’t cry, and Nightmare wasn’t anybody’s family but his, anybody’s _friend_ but his. The realization sends a fresh wave of tears down Dream’s cheeks, tears Blue doesn’t even try to wipe away. Dream isn’t a guardian, here. And certainly not of positivity, though the taller skeleton could definitely use it. Even he doesn’t ask, for something like that. He takes his hands away, making no argument.

“Alright, guys,” he says, straightening and opening a cabinet. “Who’s gonna set the table?”

“I will,” Dream sniffs hesitantly, and reaches to take the plates.


	9. Chapter 9

“Where did you even come from?”

Sludge seems surprised by the question. Not half so surprised as Nightmare is that he never asked it before. It just didn’t occur to him. Sludge has always been there, even as nothing more than a voice, a laugh in his head. He has never _not_ been there. And so there was no reason to ask, to consider that he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be, or that he’d ever change. And he hasn’t, really. Only Nightmare’s perception is different, he’s seen more of him, and he doesn’t like what he sees.

Sludge, who has been cocking his head with a funny sort of half frown while no doubt pondering Nightmare’s thoughts, reaches out and moves his queen a couple of squares to the left. “Why, you wanna send me back there?”

Nightmare smirks humorlessly. “Maybe.” He isn’t sure when he decided to let Sludge back into this thoughts. Perhaps when it became too hard to maintain the level of anger, of hatred necessary while simultaneously playing a game of chess. Many games of chess. Apparently Sludge loves the game and has been dying to play it since they first learned by watching a couple of old monsters back in the village. But they didn’t have any pieces back then, and they weren’t about to ask.

Nightmare blinks. When did he start thinking of himself and Sludge interchangeably?

Sludge is grinning. And not just because he has him cornered again. “Checkmate.”

Nightmare doesn’t care. He loses every time, mostly because he doesn’t bother to play his best. He doesn’t even know what his best is.

“I don’t know, either. But it’s gotta be a hell of a lot better than this.”

Nightmare goes to make a snippy retort, only to find a strangely pained expression on the other’s face. A pang of guilt, and he sweeps the pieces off the board to start over. “Alright. I’ll try.”

Sludge looks only mildly satisfied. “Why don’t you come out anymore.”

Nightmare shrugs. “I told you, I don’t like all the… goop. It’s gross.”

“Least you’re not calling it sludge anymore. Should I feel better?”

“Yeah, well, I’m still calling _you_ Sludge, so just play the game.”

Sludge hums under his breath. “I always do.”

Nightmare doesn’t want to talk anymore. He’s not making any progress anyway. So instead he focuses his full attention on the board, for maybe the first time.

He’s not bad, when he tries. But he has a funny feeling Sludge is letting him win. All at once a thought occurs to him and he stops mid move, gaping.

“I swear I’m not - ”

“Reading my plans in my head!”

“You don’t even plan that far ahead - ”

“Oh, so you do look?”

Sludge gapes like a cornered animal and Nightmare almost laughs. He’s never seen Sludge look quite that way. “It’s alright. I’ll beat you anyway.”

Sludge’s one visible eye flashes. “Oh yeah? Let’s see.”

And all at once the game gets harder. Sludge doesn’t hold back and neither does Nightmare, though he’s careful never to agonize too long over any one particular move. No point giving Sludge extra time to listen in on his thoughts. Sludge won’t know anything he doesn’t know, after all.

Nightmare blinks. It happened again.

Sludge’s hand glitches a little as he captures another abandoned pawn and sits back. Nightmare glances up at him once before taking his queen with a rook. Sludge puts his head down in his hands.

Nightmare doesn’t know why he’s crying. He wipes at his eyes and gets up, stepping carefully around the board. Before he knows it, he’s got one hand on Sludge’s shoulder. “Wanna call it a draw?”

Sludge shudders. A laugh or a sob, Nightmare can’t tell. And when he looks up, Nightmare can’t tell if it’s tears or just more goop in his eye-sockets. He’s smiling either way. “Nope. Forfeit. You won fair and square.”

“I didn’t mean to.” And Nightmare is crying for real. “I didn’t mean to, Sludge, I swear.”

Sludge gets up and hugs him. Just like that. “It’s just a game, Night,” he says after a minute.

But it’s not, though, is it? It wasn’t a game when Nightmare pushed him away, when Nightmare blamed him for what happened to the fruit, at the tree. When he rejected him like he’d always been rejected, the only one who _didn’t_ reject him. “I don’t want to win,” Nightmare gasps into his muddy shoulder, and Sludge laughs.

“I know you don’t. Then you’d be responsible for it.”

Nightmare doesn’t know if he’s laughing or crying anymore. “I hate myself.”

“I know.”

Nightmare thinks about what that might mean for a minute. Decides he doesn’t know and it doesn’t matter. “I’m so sorry.”

“Me too.”

Hiccup. “Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve always been sorry.” Pause. “A sorry sack of shit.”

Nightmare knows he’s laughing now. He can’t even speak.

Sludge pulls away from him, pushes him even further away with a couple of tentacles. “Alright that’s enough.”

Nightmare is filthy. Even in his mind. Covered in muck, on his face and clothing and even his crown. He wipes at his eyes again, only to leave an oily smear. “Shit,” he mutters.

Sludge smiles, Nightmare’s smile, the one for when he’s not trying to scare anybody. “You’re starting to sound like me.”


	10. Chapter 10

Neil awakens to two golden eye-lights staring at him from the open doorway. He can’t help but be a little unnerved by the glow as he sits up wearily, rubbing at his eyes and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. “Dream? Can’t you sleep?”

His only answer is a loud sniff.

His frown becomes a wince at the sudden headache. A sign he drank too much the night before. It’s all but impossible to tell time in this place without a watch and he left his in the kitchen, but he doubts it’s much later than five. Normally, when Dream is upset he goes over to see those Swap brothers. But he can’t very well do so at this hour. Neil resigns himself to being awake and smiles a little. It’s been a while since he had a little kid bothering him to get up. Dream hasn’t done it before. After all, Dream doesn’t have nightmares.

Neil pats the bed beside him. Dream comes, slowly, but doesn’t climb up. He’s got one finger in his mouth again. “I can’t hear them,” he says at last.

“Who?”

“Their… feelings. I can’t feel anything.”

Neil chooses his words carefully. “From… back home, you mean?”

Nod.

Neil can’t imagine what positive feelings Dream could have been picking up from there, anyway. But he doesn’t say this. Dream has changed. His senses bridge worlds now, and can only be particularly attuned to his own. Or what’s left of it. “Perhaps… Perhaps it is gone, child.” And he normally wouldn’t have said that, to a child. But Dream isn’t just any child, though they certainly paid for not remembering they were children, of a sort, back then. Neil should have known better than anyone, since he taught them, it was his job to work with children, every day. Then again, that hadn’t made much difference with his own, had it?

“But…” Even in the dim light of curtained windows he can see Dream’s frown. “But didn’t he say… didn’t Ink say he’d protect it?”

“He said he’d try, honey. But… as we know, trying ain’t always enough.”

Dream is silent for a long time. Neil starts to get drowsy again and almost nods off right where he sits before Dream speaks again. “I know it’s my fault. What happened at the tree.” His voice hardly trembles. “And I don’t blame you for hating me.”

“Oh… oh, _no_ , sweetheart.” Neil only has one arm, but he manages to pull Dream up beside him without much trouble. “None of it was your fault. You did your best. We all knew that.”

“But it wasn’t good enough.” The words are stubborn, brittle. As stubborn as the tears that won’t fall, not now.

Neil gives him a shake. “Now… Now, you listen here.” He’s not sure who he’s talking to anymore. “You… You were just kids. Nobody could have expected… But we should have, we should have known things were set to go that way. My own - ” He chokes. Swallows. “Skip had some trouble. With…” His voice quavers, and comes out higher than usual. “Being who his father was, there was a lot of pressure… And maybe that helped him to go wrong. And so… I can see how…” He can’t bring himself to say it, even now. Dream slowly, tentatively reaches to put his arms around him. And Neil is trying so hard to be strong, not to cry, not to curl up and die from the shame of it, of letting this child comfort him when it should be the other way, when he should’ve noticed what was wrong and put a stop to it long ago. He huffs and pats Dream’s tiny hand where it clutches at his shirt. “There now, look at me. Going all to pieces again. You know it wouldn’t surprise me if someday… if your brother… remembered himself, underneath all that.”

Dream sits up, straining to make out his expression in the dark. “You really think so?”

Neil smiles through the tears. “Mhm. Only it won’t be easy, if he does. But that’s the way of it… You do wrong, and there’s no way to… There’s not always a way to…” And he can’t, he can’t anymore. But Dream doesn’t ask him. To keep going, to keep trying.Only radiates comfort as best he can, as best he can remember how. And it is enough.


	11. Chapter 11

“ _There’s one thing I still don’t get._ ”

“Just one?” Sludge smirks. They’ve come back to that alleyway in Underfell. Turns out it’s not a bad spot to hide out, if you want to soak up negativity without being bothered. Nightmare finally agreed to come out of his head for a bit, and is busy taking a turn wiggling the tentacles around. And teasing the cat with one of them. One time she catches it, sinking her teeth right in, and Sludge reflexively slams her into the ground. She’s alright though, if how fast she runs is anything to go by.

Nightmare pouts for a while after that but eventually he seems ready to talk again, though he leaves the tentacles alone. “ _I guess I just want to know… why you didn’t call it off. Dreamtale._ ”

“Pfft. He wouldn’t have stopped if I did.”

“ _Wouldn’t he? If you didn’t keep up your side of it and fight off the squid in the others?_ ”

Sludge doesn’t say anything.

“ _I mean, because of… because of us, five worlds were destroyed. Including ours.”_

It isn’t lost on Sludge, the inclusive word choice _._ Though whether that’s simply an attempt to keep the peace isn’t clear, even with direct access to Nightmare’s thoughts. They’re hopelessly muddled now, in that area, which is better than before, admittedly. “Ink wasn’t even there for the first ones,” he deflects easily. “He was just sitting in Dreamtale.”

His interrogator falls silent. The truth is, he knows as well as Sludge why he didn’t stop it. This is just another one of Nightmare’s games. And Sludge is about to tell him so when it happens. A weak hiccup, like a skipped soulbeat, and the world blinks around him. An emptiness, in his mind, in his head. Not unlike when Nightmare retreats, recedes into the back. Only this _extends_ to the back, like the ground falling out from under him, and Sludge reels.

It’s over in a moment, and Nightmare’s thoughts flicker back in, his presence in a pulse of consciousness, and he’s chattering away in their head like he didn’t notice, something about being nicer to cats. Sludge all but shoves him back. Into that blank recess of his mind where they played chess just yesterday, and follows him in, leaving their body to fall limp in the street behind them.

“What just happened?!”

Nightmare gapes at him, his virtual form flickering at the edges from the sudden transition. “Wha - ?”

“Didn’t you feel that?! Where’d you go?”

Nightmare shakes his head, clearly at a loss. “I didn’t…”

Sludge isn’t sure why he’s so panicked. It was just a fluke, he’s just tired or sick or… Maybe there was something in that hot dog. He doesn’t need to eat, but he does sometimes, just for the heck of it.

“Sludge, your… our body is still out there. In the middle of a street in _Underfell_ , Sludge. It’s not safe - ”

Sludge doesn’t care about that, though he knows he probably will later on if somebody finds them. For now he can only flop down onto the floor of this corner, this place he’s started calling _the game room_ , if only to himself. Eight tentacles wind their way around him and conceal his face as he pulls his knees up against his chest. He can’t still his shaking, even in this imagined shape.

“Sludge, what is it?” comes a voice from surprisingly close by.

He lifts one tentacle just enough to peek out. Nightmare has crawled over on his hands and knees to peer at him with more than a little concern. Is it just Sludge’s imagination that he’s still flickering? That he’s not quite…. “There. You weren’t there.”

Nightmare only seems more confused, unsure of what to do. “I’m here, Sludge,” he says helplessly.

“You won’t leave, will you?” He’s not sure where the words come from. Nightmare wasn’t trying to leave. Not even temporarily. Sludge can see that in his mind. But…

“Why’d you let him destroy Dreamtale?” Nightmare asks pointedly, and Sludge sighs, sitting up a little and digging the heels of his hands into his eye-sockets.

“Did you not want me to?”

“Wha -? Of course I didn’t! Why would I want….”

Sludge can’t help the steely eye he gives him then. “Hm, I don’t know, why would you want that, Nightmare?”

Nightmare glares and sits back. “They didn’t deserve to die. Not the whole planet.”

“Only some of them, huh?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You thought it. Or felt it, at least. You can’t hide that stuff from me, remember?”

Nightmare passes a hand over his face. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“I don’t either. I never wanted to do this, Nightmare, to play these silly games in your head where you pass it all off on me, everything you don’t like about yourself, and I’m left to deal with it, to feel the _hate,_ the rejection even from you.” He’s suddenly angry, in the aftermath of his panic. Angry and afraid.

Nightmare is staring with his mouth open. “What do you mean?”

“Never mind.” He’d just pretend not to get it again.

“No, I want to know what you meant.”

Really? No. Not really. Sludge can see it in his mind, the reluctance and revulsion. He doesn’t want to hear, he doesn’t want to listen, he only wants to defend, to reassure himself with how unbelievable it is. Well, let him try.

The whiteness ripples. He may have left Nightmare this corner of his mind to do with as he pleases, but it’s not his, not really. Sludge is in control. And all around them on the walls, as it were, are the shapes, the memories. Blood and dust, tears and pleading, the screams and the sound, the noise of laughter above it all, metal on metal, nails on a chalkboard.

Nightmare doesn’t want to look. He has to keep his head down not to, since it’s everywhere. But there is no escaping the sound. Sludge makes sure of that. “I mean, who did it, Nightmare?” he says, making very sure he’s heard above the cacophony, imprinting the words directly on the other’s consciousness even as he speaks them.

Nightmare isn’t even trying to erase the images. He can’t. He’s weak. Weaker than ever, now. “Please, stop.”

“I’m not gonna stop, Nightmare, and I’m not gonna let it go, either, until you tell the truth. Tell the fucking truth for once in your life or I swear to god I’ll leave you here to watch until I really am rid of you, you _liar._ ”

Nightmare curls on his side, virtual fingers in his ears and his eyes squinched shut. “I’m not - I’d never - I didn’t!”

“Wrong answer.” Sludge ups the volume. “Is it for your brother, is that it? You think I don’t see your little daydreams? How you’ll meet him again someday and tell him you didn’t mean it, that you didn’t _do_ it at all and it was me, the creepy little voice inside your head that made it happen, the devil’s voice, so you can go straight back to how you were, playing nice even though that never made any difference, nobody ever loved you, even Dream, he was like that to everyone and you know it.”

“No! No, no, no!” Nightmare surprises him with the vehemence of his denial, by taking his fingers from his ears and slamming his fists onto the floor of the nothing, eyes swollen and tears all down his face.

Sludge’s mouth twists. “Who are you trying so badly to convince? It’s just us here, like always. Just you and yourself, arguing over who’s the more despicable, isn’t that right, Nightmare?” He flicks a couple of tentacles for affect and resets the images to play again, to start again from the beginning, with the worst of it. “One more time. Which one of us did it? Who slapped the life out of every single one of their classmates except Skip, that was too good for him wasn’t it, he was twisted around first, wasn’t he? _Wasn’t he?”_

He was, if the walls have anything to say about it. Nightmare is sobbing beneath the ruckus. He’s almost broken, now. Just a few more seconds and it’ll be out.

“I asked you a question.” Sludge speaks calmly now, taking one measured step forward with each word. “Who. Did. It.” If he wasn’t so attuned to Nightmare’s thoughts, his words even as he thought them, he might’ve missed the answer.

“I̸ ̶d̸o̶n̶'̷t̵ ̸k̴n̵o̸w̶.”

The images whir to a stop. Dissolve into nothing. Nightmare is lying in a fetal position and still sobbing loud enough to compete with the dissonance from before, only there is none, now. Off to the right is a red and black chessboard, toppled and abandoned.

“Wasn’t so hard, was it?” Sludge asks him. But Nightmare didn’t hear him. At least, not so his mind would show it. It seems the polite thing to do under these circumstances would be to leave, to give him a little privacy. But Sludge just went over how he didn’t want _Nightmare_ to leave, and so it seems only fair that he wait it out. He plops himself on the ground a couple of feet away and rests his chin on one hand. There’s no break in the sobs. The broken denials and admissions of his thoughts.

“You’re better than this, Nightmare,” Sludge mutters. “You’re fucking better than this.”


	12. Chapter 12

There is no day or night here. No rain, or shine to follow. Only gray.

Papyrus is spacing out again. Dream can tell. What little positivity he had is fading, shrinking into nothing as he hunches unmoving at the monitor.

Dream has grown more bold these past weeks. He doesn’t even hesitate to approach. To drape his arms over Papyrus’ shoulders like his brother does.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“But…”

“I did just fine before you came along, kid. Don’t jinx it.” Dream stiffens. “Besides, don’t need you wearing yourself out on account of me. I’m like a bottomless pit of negativity after all.”

Dream snickers a little hysterically over his shoulder. They called it a blessing, in the village. When Dream would lay his hands on someone, summoning whatever encouragement, whatever strength they might need for the day, so that their efforts might succeed. He used to be so good at it, but these days he finds himself fumbling. He could use a little practice. “It’s my job,” he insists halfheartedly.

Papyrus disentangles himself and swivels around in his chair, catching Dream with that tired, knowing gaze. “Your job is to grow up. Nothing else. For as long as you need to.”

Dream looks away. He finds it hard to look back at Papyrus, in moments like these. “What about Nightmare? Is that his job, too?”

Papyrus grins and swipes the cigarette out of his mouth to press it to one of the many makeshift ashtrays he keeps in his room. “It would be, if he was here.”

Dream watches the little trail of smoke, the sparks flickering out. “He’s not here.”

“You’re right.” Papyrus scoops him up, ignoring that little giggly squeal of protest, and carries him down the stairs like a sack of potatoes. “Sometimes they’re not, and there’s nothing you can do about it. But you…” He lets him down and straightens that golden cape around his shoulders. “You _are_ here. So make it count. Right?”

Dream promises he will. He even helps put the fire out in the kitchen, while Papyrus curses himself for letting Blue in there alone, even if he did beg. Dream’s learning how to eat, too. He never really did it much, before. And as friendly as the villagers were to him, they’d never felt comfortable, or perhaps condescending enough to dine with him. During lunch at school he and Nightmare would usually… just…

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Blue takes the napkin away from him, the one he was wringing tightly in both hands. The brothers have become used to Dream’s tears, by now. Neither one of them remark on it, only Blue hands him the water, a bewilderingly recurring offer, and grasps his hand, briefly, on the table before continuing on with his chatter about school. Last year. It’s summer here, though you wouldn’t know from the weather.

Dream doesn’t want to go to school again.

“Let’s color!” Blue is telling him. Holding out a box of crayons and a few colorful sheets of paper.

Dream stares for a minute. He didn't realize they were finished, and this probably won't do anything for the whole crying situation, but he reaches with sudden eagerness to accept them.

“Don’t you like to color?” Blue asks, a little worried. “We won’t if it makes you sad.”

Dream doesn’t even hear him. He’s heading for the living room, where he spreads their supplies out on the floor and gets started. Blue gets down on his stomach beside him and watches for a bit before beginning his own. White paper, a scribble of blue for the sky, and three stick skeletons. Two short, one tall. No ambiguity.

He peers over Dream’s shoulder before adding the final touches. “You like that color, huh?” is all he says.

“That’s too much…” An unexpected but familiar voice. “Too much yellow.”

Dream’s eyes snap up to meet a golden star and bluish square. “Ink?”

It doesn’t take Dream long to fling himself at the guardian where he perches crosslegged on the floor beside them. It hurts somehow, to see a familiar face, however little he knows it. Only the last place he saw it comes to mind, and his soul aches more than it already did. He doesn’t even notice that Ink makes no move to hug him back, or that Blue has started to his feet with a shout, and dashed to the other room. Gradually he realizes he must be getting his tears all over Ink’s scarf and so he steps back, taking in the funny green and lavender swirls now spiraling through his sockets.

“I’m sorry,” Dream murmurs almost out of habit, sniffing and wiping at his eyes. Blue has returned with his brother by the hand. Papyrus doesn’t look particularly surprised to find Ink in his house, though the door is still swinging on its hinges and he goes to close it with a rather pointed look. Dream remembers the crayon in his hand, as well as his manners, and glances blearily down at his drawing. “What…. What were you saying?”

“Contrast.” Ink blinks. Orange and red. “There isn’t any.” His voice is quiet.

Blue comes back around the couch and settles himself beside Dream again, wrapping his arms around him almost protectively. “He’s right, Dream, there is a lot of yellow.” He giggles. “You could use blue for the sky.”

“I assume you’re not here to discuss artwork.” Papyrus is lighting up another cigarette. He doesn’t sit down. “And I won’t waste time pretending I don’t know what this is about. Word travels pretty fast around here, ya know.”

Ink doesn’t seem intimidated. “So?”

“So, you wanna take this outside? One god in my house at a time is enough.”

Dream glances between them uneasily. He’s never heard Papyrus talk like that, except maybe to Neil but Neil doesn’t talk back. “I’ll go with you,” he offers suddenly, unsure where the sudden resolve comes from. “Outside, I mean. If it’s me you want to see.”

Apparently it is, since Ink gets to his feet in a flurry of movement and is at the door again. Waiting expectantly. Dream pulls away from Blue, who lets him go with a surprising lack of resistance, and makes his way over. He reaches for Ink’s hand, which twitches a little in response, and smiles what he hopes is reassuringly at Papyrus. “I’ll be back.”

The taller skeleton's expression softens for a moment. Only a moment. Before he opens the door and steps back. “Ink.” His voice catches them before they pass through. “You do realize they’re still kids, right?”

“Yes.” He doesn't stop.

It’s not raining. And there’s no sun. Just gray, and cold. Dream clutches at Ink’s hand, never mind that he’s not clutching back, and walks close. Ink doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t say anything at all for quite some time. The streets are as gray as the sky, gray plants and fences and houses. Occasionally a gray car passes by and Dream stares.

“Still haven’t done much with this place,” Ink remarks blandly.

“Uhm…” Dream glances up at him. “Are you here to tell me about Dreamtale?”

Ink looks down at him blankly. “No.”

They stop at a gray stone bridge with gray water running beneath it. Dream has to peer between the bars to see down and Ink waits for him. He still hasn’t gone many places since arriving in Omega. There are a couple of monsters down by the water. Splashing each other and laughing. Dream looks up to find Ink leaning on the railing and watching him with an unreadable expression.

“Did… something happen to it?”

Ink blinks. Blank sockets. “What?”

“Dreamtale.”

“Ah.” Green triangles. “It’s gone.”

Dream shudders at the sickening finality of those words. He looks away, back down toward the laughter and the splashing. “That’s what Neil said. I thought… I thought you…”

“Commissioned job, harder to prevent. Two on one, basically. That’s why I’m here.”

Something in his tone rubs Dream the wrong way. He gets to his feet and searches Ink’s eyes again, those bewildering shapes. He steps closer. “You… You don’t care,” he concludes wonderingly.

Ink’s face hardens. The first real reaction Dream has got out of him. “You can’t read my emotions.” Sharp. Matter-of-fact.

“It doesn’t matter, I can tell you don’t care, you don’t _want_ to care.”

Ink shrugs and almost smiles, leaning out over that bridge. “You said yourself I’m lucky.”

Dream clenches his hands into fists, eyes smarting at the betrayal. “But it’s your job, isn’t it? You’ve grown up, haven’t you? You could _choose_ to care even if I can’t choose not to.”

Ink shrugs and says nothing, still not looking at him. It’s the first time Dream has ever felt like striking someone. He did strike someone, before. He struck Nightmare and hurt him terribly, with a weapon he never knew he had, in a fight he never asked for, but still he never _wanted_ to do something like that, not until now.

Ink catches his hand before he can, eyes flaring red and not difficult to read at all. For a moment they pause, studying one another’s faces - both as furious as the other, though only one is tracked with tears. “Not everybody is like you. Your brother learned that the hard way, didn’t he?” Ink says, in a voice taught with emotions he never pretended to have. Slowly, his grip slackens, and his eyes go white. "Don’t tell me how to feel, Dream. Don't do that.”

He lets him go, and Dream rubs at his wrist, watching his companion with new eyes. Was that… empathy? And not for him. A single blue tear slips down Ink's cheek as he turns away again, and Dream feels suddenly ill. He just... hurt him? Both of them.

“I’m… Ink? I didn’t mean to.” Dream isn't supposed to make people cry. He’s supposed to make people feel better, though he hasn’t done much of that lately at all. Neil is the only one who even accepts his help anymore, and he only reluctantly.

But Ink is smiling again now, and the star has returned with the square. “I don’t like losing an AU,” he says simply, by way of explanation. And wipes the tears away.

Dream thinks for a minute. “And that’s why you’re here? You want me to help you?”

Ink sniffs. Once. “Yeah.”

“With Nightmare?”

“With Nightmare.”

Dream sighs and shakes his head, grinning despite himself. For moment, he thinks maybe there is a sun here, after all. “Why didn’t you just say that to begin with?”


	13. Chapter 13

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter which of them did those horrible things by the tree because they both wanted to. In that moment, he could feel Sludge’s feelings too, could hear his thoughts because they were his own until he pushed them out again, pushed them away because he couldn’t believe it, he couldn’t accept what they’d done, what _he’d_ done.

He’s not sure when he stopped crying. He’s just breathing now, though he doesn’t _need_ to breathe, in this place or any other. A red and black chessboard blurs into view. It fell down at some point during the argument. Did he do that? With his mind? Because he was upset? Slowly, he moves to get up, to crawl over and set it back, to drape it over that part of the nothing that serves as a table. The pieces are everywhere. As he starts to gather them up, he realizes he’s not alone. Sludge is watching from behind, curled up like he was that time when he said not to leave. How long has it been, since then? It feels like a lifetime. A lifetime of pretending.

He’s not sure why, but he tries to smile. He has so little control over his own face, even in this place. So when Sludge smiles back, no reproach, Nightmare can’t help but cry again even though if this were real, if he were in his body and not his mind, he’d be out of tears to shed.

“Alright, I’ll help you pick it up, geez.”

And he does. Scoops up the pieces and splats them on the table with a couple of tentacles.

"They're a mess now,” Nightmare protests through his tears, trying to clean them off with a sleeve.

“We're a mess.”

But still he’s trying to wipe them off, still he’s trying to set them up just right on the board for the next game. The mud runs down and cakes into the groves, where it’s all but impossible to get out and Nightmare huffs in frustration. “You can go back out,” he says when he notices that Sludge is still there, still watching and waiting.

“Not leaving you in here, you’ll drive yourself crazy.”

“You drive me crazy.”

“That’s what I just said.”

Nightmare blinks at him. “Ha-ha, very funny. Now can we go before somebody kills us or something.”

Sludge thinks for a minute. “Yeah. You okay now?”

Nightmare isn’t sure. He sets the pieces back down, muck or no muck. He’s tired of trying. “Did you mean it? When you said I was better.” His throat is tight. And he can’t look up.

“Didn’t think you were listening.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have been.”

Sludge smiles, just a little and Nightmare wishes he hadn’t said that. He gets to his feet and Sludge waits a bit before following him, though there’s no need really, to walk anywhere. They’ll get back out just as easy from here as from there, but it feels better to have some form of reference, of direction even in your own mind.

They stand for a moment, looking at the whiteness before them like it’s some kind of doorway they’ve got to pass through, and Nightmare wonders if it will be better now, if this will all go away so they won’t have to fight anymore, they’ve been honest and they can move on.

“It probably won’t be that simple but we can give it a try,” Sludge offers, and Nightmare hugs him, just like that.

“I’ll keep trying. I won’t run away anymore.”

“We might have to, if someone comes.” But Sludge is happy, Nightmare can sense it, can hear his thoughts just like his own, because they are his own.

And someone is coming. They both realize it at once, before they even pass through. A presence they’ve been dreading, they’ve been longing for from the start, or maybe the end.

 _Dream_.


	14. Chapter 14

Imperfection. Something Error despises as readily in himself as in anything else. However much he disdains those who, in their conceit, take on the role of _creator,_ he cannot help but feel that things were _designed_ with a certain rightness that must be recovered. It is the height of hubris to alter, to _corrupt_ that design with imperfections, with ideas that can be so readily distorted into that which is contrary to the natural order.

That is not to say Error thinks of himself as a god. Quite the contrary. He is simply an instrument, a tool as corrupted as the others, who would gladly annihilate every last perversion of creation and cap it all off with himself. He is the error of errors, more depraved than them all, but even he has a purpose, a role to fill if only in the destruction of his own kind. A piece of a broken puzzle, soon to be discarded in favor of the real thing, a living mural more spectacular than Ink’s most deplorable dreams. Perhaps he might see it one day, a for once clean and pure representation of existence, with no added or unnecessary elements before he, too, blips into the void.

He isn’t anything like Ink, after all. He doesn’t need some confirmation of his miserable existence. What significant imprint could he hope to leave upon a world already complete, already flawless once restored? And he will restore it, one way or another. He doesn’t mind if his emotions are manipulated, so long as it drives him to do more, to do _better_ than he might have done otherwise. So it does not bother him, the increasing rage, the unquenchable dissatisfaction with the multiverse and everything in it, even those worlds he would, in his folly, at one time tolerate. Nightmare might be an anomaly, but those motivations he inspires with his presence alone can be invaluable. At least, that’s what Error thought when he first came forward, transformed by yet another ripple of the constructed fates into a major player in this game, this great parody of life. And Nightmare is a pretender, a child and nothing more, a mistake, a glitch in the system. He has played Error for a fool, asking one thing and delivering another. From the very world for which he sought destruction, he has liberated and rescued perhaps the greatest anomaly of them all, that creature which enables contentment in atrocity, satisfaction with those travesties of normalcy that infest the multiverse.

Error doesn’t like loose ends. That is all an ally is, just one more stray thread in a tapestry of disaster. He will have to be dealt with, along with his abominable counterpart. But first, Error must wait, and watch. For though Ink might pretend to rejoice in the clumsy mistakes, the rampant corruption of his precious AUs, the destroyer knows he despises his own imperfections as much as Error does. Like all creators Ink is exceedingly proud, and unwilling to accept his own limitations. Faced with defeat on multiple worlds, he will redouble his efforts to protect what cannot be protected, by any despicable means possible, and all because of the emotions he himself has chosen to conjure. Yet another artificial imitation of the real thing, which he chose to cast away like the desecrator he is. So it is not surprising when Ink retrieves the very anomaly he managed to hide away, when he drags it right back within the enemy’s reach for his own ends. It is only a matter of time, now, before Error can erase the both of them at once, those so-called guardians of feeling, the last remnants of a job unfinished.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, double chapter update today! Also I just wanted to remind anyone who reads this to double check the tags frequently. I update the warnings there quite a bit. Thank you!

Dream peers down into the nearest bucket, a wide, wooden one all full of drippy colors and blurred images. For a moment he gazes at the thick, oily surface, into the strange mix of reflection and inner luminescence. There are people inside, only too small to make out. Their voices, too, bubble up from within, as unintelligible as a bird’s warbling. He extends his hand cautiously, curiously to touch upon the surface, and experiences a strange, twisting sensation all throughout his body when he does.

“Don’t get sucked in,” Ink tells him, and for an instant Dream thinks he almost sounds amused.

“What is it?” he gasps, drawing his hand away.

“Uhm…” Ink leans over to look. “I think that’s Horrortale.”

Dream gapes at him. “Inside this bucket?”

A shadow of a smile. “If you like.”

Dream turns back with growing wonder, eyes now golden stars, and plays his hand upon the surface again. Ink seems content to watch for a while, beneath the perpetual twilight of a place more vibrant and colorful than any Dream has encountered. Returning to Omega will feel like blindness now, after this.The sky is locked in vivid pinks and oranges, like the most glorious sunset back home. Rainbows dance over every watery surface, of which there are many. A glassy pond there, another couple of buckets just ahead, and pools scattered endlessly in every direction, gleaming in reflection of the not-sun and its bewildering glow.

“This place is amazing,” he breathes, and Ink sort of stiffens, hunching his shoulders a bit and ducking to hide the sudden flare of orange in his eye-lights.

“Thank you,” he says.

Dream tilts his head. “You… made it?”

For a moment Ink seems unsure whether to answer. “Yes?” he tries at last, and Dream can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it, this staggering accomplishment and the humility of its designer.

“You should make more places.”

Ink shrugs and shifts a bit where he sits crosslegged in the emerald grass. “I still do. Just not… on my own.”

“Wow. So… this is how you get everywhere so fast?”

Ink seems confused. “Can’t you… teleport? Through positive emotions?”

Dream just stares at him, nonplussed.

“Never mind. I thought since… It doesn’t matter, you can just come with me. Once we figure out where to go.” Ink gets to his hands and knees and crawls over to the bucket. “Do you know how to find him?”

Dream sobers a little. It’s what he’s here for, after all. Not to gawk at the scenery. “Sometimes I think I can feel… the light…fading. Like maybe, he’s repressing it?” He huffs and looks down. It sounds stupid, now he says it out loud. But Ink doesn’t laugh. He’s frowning with a strange intensity.

“No, that could take you to practically any genocide timeline, or one where there’s an excess of suffering. Not that any of those would be a bad place to start, considering. But we’ll need something more than that. Unless we just wait for something to happen, and see if he’s there.”

Dream watches him. It would seem to him that genocide is happening enough. “Don’t you… do anything? About the genocide timelines.”

Ink’s mismatched eye-lights snap up in a warning look. “You’re welcome to take on that job, if it’s something you want to do.”

Dream isn’t sure if he should say anything more. It won’t do to get in a fight again, not with what they have to do. But it can’t help but show on his face, the disapproval. Enough to prompt some elaboration.

“Stories aren’t complete without sorrow,” Ink explains with somewhat more patience than he demonstrated on the bridge. “For instance, I don’t just take yellow paint. And whatever your own artwork might look like, I notice you spend a considerable amount of time in tears. There has to be a balance.”

Dream is suddenly miserable. Every word is like an inexplicable dagger in his soul and for a moment he thinks he might vomit. How long has he been in learning that, or has he learned it?

“Do you want to go back?” The quiet question surprises him. Ink looks neither concerned nor triumphant, and Dream attempts to pull himself together.

“N-no,” he gasps shakily, and refuses to cry.

Ink nods in an almost businesslike way and waits silently for him to recover. When he eventually does, and can formulate a coherent thought, he says, “But… can I ask you one thing?”

“Yes.”

“Is the one you call the destroyer… I mean, is he like… is there a balance between you, too?”

Ink’s expression does not change. “No.”

“Oh. That’s different?”

“That’s different.” And now there is something like steel in his eyes. And just a hint of red.

Dream decides to drop it. “There might be a better way,” he says, by way of returning to the subject at hand. “To find Nightmare, I mean.”

“What’s that?”

“Well…” Dream glances back down into that colorful pool of horrorstricken timelines. “He’s my brother.” His voice catches. “So even though… even though I can only sense positive feelings, I can... tell his apart, from the others. It’s just” - and here Dream pauses, with something like an imploring look - “It’s just that he doesn’t feel that way very often.” The last words leave him in a rush, along with his resolve not to cry.

Ink doesn’t react at first except that his eye-lights switch rapidly between several different shapes. Then slowly, cautiously he scoots over until they are side by side. He doesn’t put an arm around him or otherwise attempt to comfort. Only sits there beside him until he’s through. And then, with no change in tone or demeanor - “I see.”


	16. Chapter 16

The first thing Sludge notices about Dream is that he _hasn’t_ noticed Sludge yet. He is walking alone with a sort of timid resolve Sludge doesn’t recognize. Not that he recalls much of anything about him. Dream never paid attention to Nightmare, not to what mattered, so Sludge didn’t bother giving him any either.

The second thing Sludge notices is the golden bow, with its arrow trained carefully on the ground. It’s the perfect size for Dream, who has always been a bit smaller than his twin, and seems formed purely from positivity. Sludge remembers it well. Dream grasps it a bit too tightly as he glances from one alleyway to the next and comes ever closer. If Sludge wasn’t still slumped against a dumpster much the same color as himself, Dream would likely have seen him by now.

And the third thing he notices, as Dream makes his steady but trembling approach, is the dark, angry-looking blaster hovering behind him. They are directly within the line of fire, the pair of them, though Dream will get the worst of it if it does. But Dream doesn’t even realize it’s there. In fact, he’s almost treading upon Sludge’s feet before he realizes _he’s_ there, and stops. For a moment they stare at one another, shocked and unmoving. Then, in the same instant that Dream shifts his aim, just a little, up from the ground, a far more deadly weapon opens its mouth.

“Look out!” It’s Nightmare’s voice. A split second before Sludge catches hold of Dream with both arms and eight tentacles, all but crushing him as they roll, swiftly, from the path of a no doubt deadly blast.

“Oops! Looks like you missed!”

Sludge knows that voice. But there’s no time to think about it now. He disentangles himself from his brother, propping him up against the wall they’ve just a moment ago collided with. “Are you okay?”

Dream nods, shaken, and his eyes dart down and to the left, where Sludge is only just now registering a sharp, burning sensation in his lower ribs. He reaches with one tentacle and, ignoring how even the touch pains him, yanks the arrow from his muddy essence. “Thanks for that,” he gasps and tears leap to Dream’s eyes.

“I’m sorry!” he cries, with both hands at his mouth.

Just then there’s another blast, and the brick crumbles around them. Dream snatches him up this time, yanking him his feet so they can run, hand in hand, up this alley and into the next when it ends, hovering for a moment to look back.

The guardian of the AUs is perched crosslegged on the dumpster now, and making a funny whistling noise with his teeth. “Damn! Got away again,” he says, and his seat dissolves beneath him. That kind of molecular destruction can mean only one thing, and Sludge quick shoves Dream back.

“But - what’s happening?!”

“The destroyer,” Sludge snaps curtly, and drags him on, until they’ve reached the verges of Snowdin, and off in the distance there’s the telltale reddish glow of echo flowers. Sludge has no intention of getting that far. “Quick, we need to leave. I don’t think we can… travel together. Where do you want to… uh….” It takes him a moment to realize what he’s saying. He steps back and makes a show of checking his wound, though it doesn’t sting nearly as much now.

Dream isn’t listening. He’s busy looking back the way they came. “But I can’t just… Ink’s back there by himself.”

“Fat lot of good we can do, once they get started. Honestly, what did you think would happen?”

Dream turns back, wide-eyed. “I thought he was your friend!”

“Ink?”

“No, the - the other one!”

Sludge snorts. “Oh, come on, Dream, since when do I have friends?”

Dream stares, looking almost on the verge of tears again, and Sludge realizes, once more, what he just said. “I mean,” he stutters awkwardly, “I can’t even do the whole evil alliance thing right. Heh.” He flicks a couple of tentacles and then uses them to sort of hug himself, a habit he has developed gradually during these past weeks in the wintery climate. “Was kind of expecting it, actually.”

Dream hasn’t said anything for almost a minute now. He’s frowning a little and staring in a way that makes Sludge distinctly uncomfortable. Well, he hasn’t had much chance to really look at his brother, has he, since he turned into a slimy, tentaclely abomination?

Dream takes a step forward, and then another. They’re inches apart now, with Dream peering intently into his face. “Are you… you are Nightmare, aren’t you?”

Huh. Perhaps Dream was more attentive than he thought.

It’s only then that Sludge realizes how quiet Nightmare has been, since his initial outburst. No purposefully thinking at him, begging to use his voice, arguing with him over what to do next. A quick check of his mind reveals acute apprehension, as well as an extreme reluctance to speak, to reveal himself. So that’s the way it is, huh? Leaving Sludge to deal with Dream alone.

No problem. “Yeah, but not the one you know.” He waits while the ball drops. And then Nightmare is screaming in his head, to come out, to speak for himself, and Sludge is grinning his best grin.

Dream, however, is not only confused but profoundly disappointed. Sludge can feel his emotions clearly, and he finds himself wishing he couldn’t.

“I mean, I am,” he amends. “Just… it’s complicated. Can we talk somewhere else? You know how to teleport, don’t you?”

Slowly, Dream shakes his head.

“Wha - I - you’re kidding me. How did you even get here? No, never mind,” Sludge huffs, stamping his feet a little and considering their options. “All that commotion will probably draw most guards back here if they aren’t already,” he mutters. He takes Dream’s hand again and starts toward Waterfall. “We should be able to lay low there for a while. If Error doesn’t destroy the whole timeline, that is.”

Dream says nothing. Nightmare has quieted down a little, though he’s still nagging. Sludge tells him to shut up, mentally, since his own natural thoughts are segmented off from Nightmare’s again, and they won't be heard if not projected. He doesn’t think Dream could handle the added shock just now, of seeing his brother switch back and forth between two decidedly different personas. He notices absently that Dream is perfectly clean, if a bit disheveled. Not a bit of muck rubbed off on him, and Sludge hasn’t exactly been careful.

“So you’ve been fighting?” The question comes just as they’re passing the empty guard post, and on to the falling rock puzzles.

“Who?”

“You and… Error.”

“Not till now. But I kinda figured he’d show up once he found out I changed you back.”

Dream stops short. Sludge nearly stumbles and lets go. “You… changed me back?”

“ _Exactly my reaction,_ ” Nightmare stops nagging long enough to say.

Sludge huffs impatiently and crosses his arms. “I thought you knew. Didn’t Ink tell you?”

Slowly, Dream shakes his head.

“Well.” Sludge starts walking again and Dream follows. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.” Dream is in tears again. “It does matter because I thought you - I almost - !”

Nightmare’s first instinct is to hug him. Sludge doesn’t feel like it. “You can cry later. We need to get some cover.” There’s a place behind a waterfall he particularly likes. Dark and hidden. They crawl in there and sit against the far wall so they can watch the water. It looks like blood.

“This isn’t… a very nice world, is it?”

“Not really. But I’m not a very nice person.”

Dream gives him that funny look again, like he’s never seen him before. And then laughs.

Sludge blinks. It never occurred to him that Dream would be as readily amused by his jokes as Nightmare. He always pictured a rather huffy, disapproving reaction. As it is, Nightmare is the one rather more prone to those. Maybe if he’d relaxed a little, he could’ve…

No, Nightmare was far too preoccupied with putting up a front, with being something he wasn’t to make anybody laugh. That’s why Sludge is here, right?

And with that comes an idea. A selfish one, maybe. But they’ll be waiting here a while. And Dream seems pretty adept at creating something from nothing, even if they are golden somethings that hurt a lot. He wouldn’t be surprised if he could do the same. Sludge runs his finger through the dirt, tracing out a couple of squares. “Do you like chess?”


	17. Chapter 17

Ink only leaves Dream alone for a few minutes. He figures that will be enough, for the destroyer to show himself. And sure enough, he is there when the dust clears, all blue strings and grinning yellow teeth.

Everything is easier with Error. Ink doesn’t have to be self conscious. Whatever emotion he feels, and however he expresses it, Error will laugh at him anyway. Will despise him anyway. There is no right way to feel, to act, and so Ink can do everything wrong, or right, and still it makes no difference. In fact, the more Error despises him the less coherent he becomes, and the less likely to notice anything abnormal.

For Ink is anything but normal. He knows that as well as anyone, and he’d rather not be reminded. Nothing enrages him more than Error’s systematic elimination of all those things he deems abnormalities, the _worthless_ label he slaps onto everything he cannot understand, even himself. So Ink might look like he’s having fun, when he teases Error, and perhaps he is, in a way. But that is only because it drives Error’s rage, his hatred to a whole other level, a safe level that Ink can work with.

Hatred is simple. Uncomplicated. Ink’s eyes go a funny combination whenever he feels it, the red crosshairs on the right and an orange swirl on the left. Yes, Ink hates Error, and more than that he is happy, he is ecstatic to do so, for the feeling is mutual. For one explosive moment his feelings align with someone else’s, there is empathy and there is sincerity, such as Ink can anticipate in no other circumstance than this, this collision of wills, of ideals, which no amount of diplomacy, of emotions properly expressed can remedy. He’d be doomed to fail before he tried, so he doesn’t, he just hates and fights and laughs at his opponent.

“Not your usual target, huh? Couple of kids and the whole timeline left unscathed.” It’s a generous assessment. One dumpster at least is no more now, and Ink poised in mock calm amidst the wreckage.

“Could say the s-same of you. Aren’t usually one to _destroy_ people, a-are you?”

Ink shrugs. “Wasn’t trying to destroy him. Bet they’re off making up right about now. We should try that.” But Ink only says that to make him mad, to watch him sneer and hate Ink more, since it’s not like Ink hoped for anything else, Ink doesn’t hope much at all because hope is complicated, it’s not like hatred, hatred is simple.

But Error doesn’t even bother with that today, with taking the bait, with howling in rage and renewing his efforts. He doesn’t even look that angry, and Ink isn’t sure what to do when Error’s not angry; in fact, he’s not sure when he last saw him otherwise. 

“I-If you think I’m gonna w-waste time battling with y-you just so they can g-get away, you’ve got another thing coming. This isn’t over, s-squid.” And with that he’s gone, leaving nothing more than a couple of shifting pixels in the air behind him. And this is worse, this is worse than a hundred blue strings whipping through the air to trap him, to squeeze the life out of him since he doesn’t have a soul, or a thousand dark, stringy blasters to reduce him to molecular dust. Once more he’s inadequate, unworthy even to be hated, to be challenged with any real rage. He is an inconsequential, emotionless blip of programming, of soulless matter in a sea of vibrant, pulsating life forms. Even Error’s apathy is more real than Ink’s paltry display of venom, and he almost lets them catch him, the dogs that come sprinting up the alley when the only real threat is gone. But he leaves at the last moment, vanishing in his own paint with a splat, since that’s all he’s good for isn’t it, that’s all the more effect he has on anything, just a puddle of paint mingling with the rest of the garbage in some forgotten gutter.

He’s been back at the Doodle Sphere for maybe a couple of hours before he realizes he’s forgotten something. _Someone_ , back in Underfell. And he’s about to get up and go back, to actually feel bad about something, about someone other than himself when he appears, emerging almost cautiously from a golden portal that opens up somewhere near the Underfell bucket. Ink blinks. He opened the perimeters to admit Dream some time ago, as they’d come and gone more than once together, during their search for his brother. But…

“You can teleport?” is all he says. With an all new level of blandness.

“Nightmare showed me how.” Dream is rivaling Ink now, with his lack of expression.

“Figures.” Ink’s just trying to best him at this point. He didn’t get much of a fight earlier, after all.

Dream _does_ take the bait. “What do you mean, figures? You’ve figured on a lot of things recently, haven’t you?” he demands, in a decidedly _not_ expressionless tone. He looks about ready to burst into tears again only he doesn’t, he’s shaking with a very familiar emotion. _Rage._ And, as simple as that usually is, Ink has never been more nonplussed.

“You knew…” Dream continues, in a voice choked with feelings Ink can only hope to comprehend, “You knew he changed me back only you didn’t tell me, you wanted me to fight him, didn’t you?”

Ink has to think for a moment. He’s still poised in a half seated position like he was when Dream arrived, when he was getting up to go back and find him only he didn’t need to, nobody really needs Ink to do anything. He settles himself more comfortably, which means sitting crosslegged, and toys with the end of his brush, which he also had ready in case it was needed when he went back, though he never did since _he_ wasn’t needed. “I wanted you to be _able_ to fight, if you had to,” he admits bluntly. “I had every reason to believe you would.”

Dream approaches stiffly. He’s a little taller than Ink is seated, so he gets down on his hands and knees so he can look him in the face. The little guardian’s eyes might not be able to change color, but his face does, heated with fury. Ink stares back at him silently until Dream speaks again, finally, and the words barely make it passed his teeth. “Don’t tell me how to feel,” he spits. And then he gets back up again, steps back through his own portal, and vanishes.

“Huh,” Ink says aloud to his only friend, his inanimate brush that never once left him, either in rage or indifference. "He was a lot easier to talk to as a statue.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out [this awesome art](https://wandersoffdoodling.tumblr.com/post/618779260621144064/the-ink-from-shadow-porpoises-fantastic-dreamtale) WandersOffDoodling made of my Ink!


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge shoutout to PureDragon who created [this beautiful portrayal](https://slepyfibre.tumblr.com/post/618006439946010624/so-i-drew-a-scene-from-shadowporpoises-fanfic) of a scene from chapter 4, and also to Dusk, who drew [this adorable portrait](https://duskenne-doodles.tumblr.com/post/618107949745946624/little-doodle-of-sludge-nightmare-who-is-in) of Sludge. Thank you so much.

Dream looks almost surprised to see them when he gets back. Nightmare isn’t sure why. They told him they’d be here. But Dream doesn’t have much reason to trust them, not yet.

It’s as dark and dreary as ever in the little cave behind the water, though crimson light still bleeds through the tumbling liquid curtain. it didn’t take long at all for Sludge to teach Dream how to travel, to melt right into the feelings that make up his essence. Sludge never struggled a bit with it on his own, even at the start. It was almost as if he’d been doing it for years. But perhaps Dream’s aim is a little off, since he breaks through the falls from the outside, not even bothering to duck behind, and now he’s wet and shivering.

“How’d it go? You got there alright?” Sludge asks, sticking slimy hands in even slimier pockets.

“Yeah."

“Good. When you’ve already been there once, it’s easier to… uh…” Sludge stutters at the look on Dream’s face. So different from earlier, when he grinned with triumph, waggling Sludge’s captured king before his eyes, though that touch alone almost froze his fingers before he dropped it. It took three tries for him to win, though Sludge let it happen, Nightmare knew. It was right in his head, the way to stop it, and Sludge ignored him. But Nightmare didn’t mind. Anyone who slogs through three consecutive games of chess with Sludge deserves at east one victory. Especially since Dream hadn’t played much before, he said, though he knew how. Nightmare isn’t sure what to make of that. That Dream could’ve played with him all along, and he missed the chance to ask.

Oh, well. It hardly matters now. Dream seems much more somber and preoccupied as he clutches his own arms against the cold and stares at the ground without seeing. Sludge is quiet for long enough that Nightmare realizes he doesn’t know how to handle it, Dream’s sudden change in mood. Well, it’s not as though Dream was ever particularly prone to moodiness, before. Even those nights when it stormed he was only frightened for as long as it lasted, a fleeting sorrow easily remedied with the coming dawn, the invariable sunlight that chased the shadows away. Nightmare only ever had to hold him until it did. A poor, almost ludicrous substitute.

But a willing substitute nonetheless. Nightmare takes control without really thinking and for once Sludge doesn’t stop him. “Hey… are you okay?”

His tone gives him away. Dream turns sharply, searching his eyes, his face. Whatever he’s looking for he must find it, because he dives at him headlong like they’ve only just met again, for the first time since it happened, since Nightmare disappeared beneath a river of sludge. Dream seems even shorter now, since he lost a year, and Nightmare turns his head to rest it on top of his brother’s, tentacles limp and forgotten at his back. He can almost remember himself now, for a moment, though it’s not all of himself, despite the sludge or because of it, he doesn’t know. He’s not that person anymore, the one who comforted Dream beneath that tree, and he’s not sure if he ever was. But Dream doesn’t seem to mind either way, so Nightmare tries not to.

“I missed you,” Dream says thickly, and Nightmare’s face twists with discomfort.

“It was only a couple months, for you, wasn’t it?”

Dream says nothing, but they both know it’s more than that, it _was_ more than that. Nightmare isn’t the only one who has changed, nor is time the only factor. A roll of thunder couldn’t shake Dream now, but he _is_ shaken to the very core, both now and forever.

They don’t play chess anymore. Dream is tired and keeps yawning while he explains, rambling more than anything, about what happened with Ink. Nightmare listens without interrupting, huddled with him against the side wall. He’s used to waiting his turn. It’s funny this should bother Dream enough to go on about, when he hasn’t even asked his brother a single question about what happened between _them_ all that time ago. Maybe it’s just easier. Nightmare doesn’t know whether or not to be relieved.

Finally, when Dream is quiet long enough he might be asleep, Nightmare decides to ought to say something. “Maybe… he’s scared.”

The silence stretches on. Then - “What do you mean?” All traces of drowsiness have fled his voice.

Nightmare wonders if he shouldn’t have said anything after all. “Well, he… he doesn’t trust his own emotions, right? So he can’t trust anyone else’s.”

The water hisses over the falls. Sludge is quiet. Nightmare wonders if he’s listening. Perhaps not, as he doesn’t respond to even that thought, the brief, half-question in his mind. And suddenly the silence is too loud and he wants to break it again, he can’t stand not to break it again, there’s so much left unsaid, and unheard. “I mean, I don’t. I don’t even recognize myself anymore,” he says, with unexpected force. He looks through his one good eye, at his hands, at the oily fingers and the running muck off his clothing, tumbling tentacles like giant snakes all around him, around Dream, and he feels far away, he must stay away or it’s too close, too real to get away from. But Sludge doesn’t come to save him, doesn’t take over for him so he can run, he can hide and never look through this eye again, _his_ eye. “I’ve hurt you because of it,” he gasps, “Both of you,” he adds aloud to be sure Sludge can hear him since he isn’t talking, he isn’t _there_ and Nightmare must do this alone. “The only ones who ever really knew me, I lied so you’d stay only you would have anyway, wouldn’t you, only I ran away before you could.” He’s crying but Dream hasn’t moved, hasn’t said anything, though he’s sitting close, still. Staring at the water.

When he does speak, it’s in a tone fully calm and even flat by comparison. “Night, what did you mean when you said you weren’t… you? You’ve changed that much, or…”

“I’ve seen a lot of things.” Nightmare’s mouth speaks on its own, and he gapes in silence, in relief as Sludge continues and the tears wash away on his face. “Things I was meant to handle. The horrible things people do to each other, how they think of each other. I was designed to face it so… so the rest of me didn’t have to. I can take it all, and laugh. That’s who I am. Everything Nightmare loves to hate about himself. Everything he wishes he was and hates to be.”

Nightmare can’t even think. Slowly, Dream turns his head to look at him, at them. His eyes are liquid gold, calm and somber. No trace of fear. “What’s your name?”

Sludge blinks. They’re reeling, the pair of them, in their shared mind. And Nightmare is giggling hysterically, nonsensically behind his own face. “Sludge.”

A flicker of something. Surprise? Amusement? “You… Sludge?”

“Yes. It’s what he calls me.”

“What you call yourself.”

“Yes.”

Dream snorts. Snickers. Doubles up laughing. Both Nightmares, the only Nightmare watches in shock. “Oh, god,” Dream cries, wiping at his eyes. And then he sits back enough to stick out his hand between them. Hesitantly, Sludge takes it. Slime spills cleanly between Dream’s fingers. “Well, Sludge,” he gasps, still short of breath, “Thank you for looking after my brother.”


	19. Chapter 19

Sometime during the night it happens again. That… blip. Of Emptiness. Only it lasts longer. And Sludge starts into wakefulness, reeling from the loss. The more he reaches for it the more swiftly it slips away, like a fast waning dream he can’t quite recall. His brother is sagging against his shoulder, fast asleep. Sludge does his best not to move, to position himself in such a way that he won't fall and wake him up when he retreats back into his own mind.

Nightmare is everywhere and nowhere. In the unfurnished whiteness, the neatly assembled chess pieces, the part of Sludge that wants to cry right now because he can’t find him, he’s not speaking back, even with his thoughts. Why would he go, now? When he’s finally gotten what he wanted - his brother back, and no great conflict to show for it. There are more questions to come, surely, even difficult ones, but they can deal with it together, like always. Sludge is the only one who ever had to face anything alone; he was born from the rejection, from the pain of being cast aside in the beginning, before they even had enough consciousness to remember it. Negativity is seldom embraced. But Dream has embraced him, embraced Sludge like a brother, as a part of his brother, an essential part, even. So what more… could…

He freezes. One piece is missing from their chessboard. He gets to his virtual hands and knees to look for it, to find it since it must’ve rolled under where the game is propped up on the nothing. Sure enough it’s there, still swaying a little from side to side. Black, with a tiny cross on the top. But before he can grab it, it’s back on the board, on the red center square, and the one who placed it humming tiredly as he hunches alone over the game. A faded purple form, prodding at his pawn with a flickering hand. Two squares forward and then he stops, turns the board around, and resumes from the other side, with the other pieces.

Sludge is afraid to do anything, to touch him for fear he’s not really there and his hand passes through. So it takes a moment for him to get up the nerve and speak. “Thought you didn’t like chess,” he says hoarsely, and all but collapses beside him.

Nightmare glances dolefully at him before twisting the board around and resuming the game. He's not wearing a crown. “Apparently I do.”

Three words laden with a thousand thoughts, a mere fraction of which are anything like coherent. Sludge gives up and watches him play for a while.

It’s funny, being on the same side. Not much of a match, when you’re the one moving all the pieces. It never was. Always Sludge is the stronger. He felt the pain and laughed at it, he did his job and reveled in it, he embraced the darkness and hid in it. He plucked the negative apples long before Nightmare even thought to, the fruits of his labor in the village, a job done too well because he had to do it, it was _his_ job and he had no other, he _was_ no other but one who did it, who was made to do it. And from there he could escape, he could gain access to the entirety of the multiverse, where he consumed every last dreg of negativity he stirred up because it was his job, it was all he was good for, that and laughing, laughing while he did it. And Nightmare…

Nightmare was nothing. Nightmare did nothing. Nightmare just cowered and cried and waited for him to come back and make him laugh, because he had precious little to make him laugh in those days, in any day, since he didn’t do his job, he gave that to Sludge so he didn’t have to. And Sludge had done it, Sludge had done it too well in the village and made him suffer, made them both suffer because they are the same, they are one though they are two, and only one should do that job, one whole and not a fragment. 

“Did you really not know,” he says.

Nightmare checkmates himself and topples the pieces, all set to start again. It’s easy enough to win when you’re the only opponent.

Sludge helps him put things back, the way they were, starting with this end. A couple of times he grabs for the wrong color, having played the opposite side for so long. He knows that if anyone’s redundant, he is. He may not be a liar, he may not cower and cry but he is a half-truth, a fake, a stand-in for the real thing, the real thing that was missing just a moment ago when he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t find him.

Nightmare sniffs and starts on the red pieces, reaching out to set them in place without toppling the others, which is no easy task from this angle. He doesn’t turn the board. “I guess I did,” he admits softly.

They play in silence for a while, both of them at one side with the board rotating between them, neither favoring one color or another.

“We’re never going to be able to play, you know,” Nightmare says finally. When they’re almost winning, and losing on the other side. Sludge can’t recall which he was hoping for. “With magic pieces and dirt, or real ones and wood. I think there’s marble sets, in some places. Didn’t Dream say something like that?”

Sludge nods and gathers up the captured pieces into a tidier pile. He’s not sure what they’re made of.

Nightmare sighs and spins the board again. “Yeah, so. It’s not like me and you will ever play like that.”

“Like this we can.”

Nightmare looks at him. Sludge can almost see through to the whiteness, the nothingness behind him and he’s scared. He’s very scared. “We’re better than this, aren’t we?” Nightmare asks quietly.

Sludge can’t help it. He clings to him with both arms and all eight tentacles, though he can’t hardly tell he’s there, just a shadow of a presence in his mind. “I hope so,” he whispers through his tears.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please check out PureDragon's [gorgeous art](https://slepyfibre.tumblr.com/post/618278404281794560/even-more-fanart-for-shadowporpoise-3-heres-the) for the previous chapter!

Dream never asks which one he’s talking to. Perhaps he knows. Or maybe he just doesn’t think it matters. Sludge isn’t sure. He’s never guessed wrong, either way. Though sometimes he’ll address the other, by name, in the middle of a conversation. Dream doesn’t play favorites. He’s just as happy to play Sludge in a match of chess while simultaneously nagging Nightmare to come with him, _back home_ , as he calls it.

“What are you, anyway, if not a remnant from a ruined world?” He shrugs and flips his cape over one shoulder.“Same as everybody there.”

“I’m the one who _destroyed_ my own world,” Nightmare protests. He shakes a little, when he takes over. There’s no strength in his hands. Sludge lets him relax and resumes the game as soon as he finishes each sentence. He doesn’t want him wearing himself out.

Dream shoots him a searching look before making his next move. “I think you’d be surprised. Even Neil said someday you might - ”

“Neil? He made it out?” Nightmare’s voice quavers, too. A lot of images are going through his mind. Sludge tries not to notice.

Dream nods somberly and moves his queen. “He was living nearby, and came with me when we evacuated. I guess there wasn’t time to get the others, or… or I guess maybe Ink thought he’d… he’d…”

“Ink doesn’t care about genocide, isn’t that right?” Sludge can’t help himself. He shifts his bishop a little and Dream retreats.

“I don’t know what Ink cares about,” he admits quietly, after a time. “But I know he takes all colors of paints, just so he can feel, even the bad things. So… so he wouldn’t keep you out now, I don’t think.”

Sludge examines the makeshift board, traced from the dirt and smudged here and there where they’ve brushed the lines with their pieces. Then he looks down, to where Dream’s captured ones lie in a jumbled heap. “These don’t even look like chess pieces,” he snickers, and Dream pouts. He’s managed to work a star into most of the designs.

“None of them look like what they’re called, anyways,” he argues. “I mean, they don’t even have faces!”

Sludge roles his eye-light. He looks like what he’s called, anyway, even if Nightmare doesn’t. He was right when he tried to take his name, when he wanted to go by it and Nightmare wouldn’t let him, and that’s funny because he lets him have everything now.

“I can remove my own pieces from the board.”

Sludge glances up from where he was dumping another captive into the pile. “I already did.”

“Yeah, but you’re burning your fingers.”

Sludge shrugs, not even bothering to wince. It does sting a little, but it’ll pass.

“Maybe we can get a real set, sometime.”

Sludge goes quiet. They play for a while, in silence. Then - “Neil attacked first, you know,” he mutters. Unsure where it’s coming from, this sudden urge to make excuses, to hide like Nightmare because pretty soon he won’t get to hide behind Nightmare, it’ll just be him and his choices, a voice with a body who never should’ve had one, who never should have stolen one away.

 _“It’s your move,”_ Nightmare tells him weakly, and Sludge rubs at his temples. Nightmare is able to hear his thoughts quite often now. And it’s a lot more unnerving than he thought. Is this how Nightmare felt, when he intruded on every hope and fear, and laughed at it? Only now it’s just the opposite, Nightmare might try to distract him but doesn’t laugh and Sludge wishes he would, wishes he could, that he had something to laugh about.

“I’m not sure he remembers,” Dream is saying. Shoving a rook right into his path. Bait? Or… “But everyone was a little crazy that day, you know.”

They were. He was. Out of his mind, which is where he should have been, should have stayed, in Nightmare’s mind where he could do no damage beyond a cynical laugh, a broken promise to make things better if he turned into a monster, if he lost himself to the darkness. The darkness Sludge created. “What’s the point,” he gasps suddenly, grasping Dream’s captured rook in one hand till it hurts so much it stops hurting, and smoke rises from his fist. “What’s the point, anyway, if I’m like this? All I do is hurt people. It’s what I am, just the pain and the fear and the hate. You realize that, right? Of course they want you there, of course Ink saved you, of course _I_ saved you so I could feel better, I could be happy even though I shouldn’t, I don’t deserve it. Nobody deserves it, what I’ve done to them, what I’ve made them feel. What I’ve made _him_ feel.” He doesn’t realize he’s rambling until Dream lays a hand on his, on the one that holds the rook, and pries gently at his fingers.

“Sludge. Sludge, let go.” And of course he guesses right, he knows who he’s talking to because they’re nothing alike, Sludge is nothing like Nightmare even though he’s been telling him he is, he’s been _pretending_ that he is for ages. Dream’s cries grow more frantic, and he tugs urgently at his sizzling fingers. “Sludge, you’re _hurting_ yourself, please!” And then Sludge laughs, he laughs so hard he can’t hold on any longer. The rook tumbles from his grasp and he can see through to the bone on his hand, the pearly white palm beneath the slime, where the sludge broke and burned away. Dream is in near tears now, and reaches up to catch hold of his face, to turn it toward him and peer earnestly into it. “Sludge, what’s wrong?”

Sludge rubs his now raw, bony fingers against his thumb. He gazes, unseeing, back into Dream’s eyes. “Maybe nothing,” he says. And grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More [sketches](https://i.imgur.com/nmsT2WJ.png) by PureDragon, thank you so much.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update.

There is no chess board. It’s just them, and the emptiness that has become their mind. They aren’t saying anything, though each gazes on his virtual counterpart with something like the intent to speak, eventually.

“I guess you know what I’m thinking,” Sludge says at last, and his voice comes out a lot less confidentthan he means it.

“Yes.” Nightmare’s voice is steady, calm. Not anything like his scrambled thoughts. Thoughts he doesn’t even try to hide from the other.

“You’re awfully quiet,”Sludge observes. An offhand challenge.

“Would it help if I begged?” An unspoken plea.

“No.”

Nightmare shrugs near-translucent shoulders. No change of expression.

Somehow the silence is worse, than screams or tears. Sludge isn’t sure what he expected, but this could very well be the last time they see each other, like this. And though it won’t matter to him, whether there’s anything like a fond memory, he’d like to think it matters to Nightmare. Even a little.

“Look,” Sludge tries, taking a tentative step forward, “It’s not to like…”

“If you’re gonna say something like you won’t really be gone because you’re a part of me, then just…don’t.” And it is there, the reaction Sludge expected, even wanted, maybe, if only to know there was still some fight left, some strength left in him.

Sludge chuckles, dryly, and ducks his head. “I am a part of you,” he says. “Just… not the most important part.”

The tears are coming now, if a little late. “Dream won’t do it.” A last ditch effort.

Sludge sighs. “He might, if we explain…”

“I’m not explaining anything.” Coldly triumphant.

“Ok.” Sludge starts to turn.

He can feel it coming before it does, the shout, the thoughts screaming in unison with it. “I̶ ̷h̴a̴t̶e̷ ̸y̸o̴u̶,̷ ̴S̷l̴u̴d̵g̸e̵!̷ ̸h̴a̵t̷e̶ ̵y̴o̴u̵ ̷s̸o̸ ̸m̵u̴c̸h̴!̴” Nightmare recreates the chess board just to kick it after him, only he can’t, his foot passes right through what his mind created and he stumbles pathetically into Sludge’s arms, clinging furiously and crying. He weighs nothing. “You have no right to do this,” he sobs into his shoulder, and Sludge hugs him tightly, one last time.

“I know. Guess that’s why I have to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out [this really beautiful sketch](https://i.imgur.com/23KuFrE.jpg) by [Queezle](https://quezq.tumblr.com) for this scene!


	22. Chapter 22

Ink doesn’t think Error will be back any time soon. Not for Dream and Nightmare, anyway. Oh, he’d kill them on sight. Ink has no doubt about that. But already he’s attacked three unrelated worlds since then. Fickle and impetuous. Going wherever he feels like, doing whatever he wants to in the moment. Ink isn’t like him. Feelings have little bearing on what he does, or where he goes. They can’t; they aren’t real. And he knows that, as much as he wants to forget it. He doesn’t forget anything, not really. Nothing important, anyway. It’s just that not very many things are important, to Ink.

That’s why he’s lying in the grass and staring at the sky. Doing nothing. While Error no doubt plots his next ambush. Ink will go, wherever he next strikes. But it won’t have anything to do with the twins from Dreamtale. They were only in danger as long Ink was involved. Everyone is worse off when Ink is involved, which is why he seldom is, on a personal level. He made an enemy of Error without even trying, and that’s when he _started_ trying, so it wasn’t a mistake, though their destructive battle for the worlds wasn’t his plan, wasn’t his fault, it was just a result, a result of too much feeling, too much hate from the both of them.

So it’s better not to feel anything. That’s right, it’s better, and he’s not a freak or a mistake or anything of the kind. He’s normal, and they’re _not_ normal, with their petty whims and tears. He only wants to feel because they do, it’s just jealousy, which is a feeling too and that’s the problem. And he’s about to get up and close it off again, the confines of the Doodle Sphere to anyone but himself, when there’s a loud popping sound and Dream comes tumbling out of his own portal.

“Ink,” he gasps, and there are tears running all down his face and into the grass, a whole torrent of emotions this place would have been impervious to, had he waited a moment longer.

“What is it?” Ink asks, though he knows what it is, it’s a deeply excessive sorrow called grief. He’s seen it on many faces, that look when their loved ones die, when they’re swallowed into nothing because he couldn’t save them.

“It’s… I… I think I killed him,” Dream sobs and then he can’t speak at all with the weight of it, he’s on his hands and knees and puking golden magic into the grass, bones shuddering.

“You’re hurt,” Ink notes in a detached sort of way. Taking in the bruises, the wounds all over his body. And, “Stop crying.” Because it’s too much. Too much just now, the outpouring of feelings he’ll never have, when he was just getting ready to shut them out.

Dream makes an attempt to comply with the request. Now he just sounds like he’s choking. “Ink, I’m… I’m… I know you’re mad at me, but please, you’ve got to help me.”

Ink blinks at him, astonished. “I’m not mad at you.” He doesn’t feel enough to stay mad at anyone, except maybe Error, and Error’s not even here.

Dream looks as if he might faint. And if he does that, Ink will have to wait, and be worried, until he wakes up. Slowly, he takes a step closer, and Dream dives at him, hiccuping into his chest. “Please, I can’t live if I’ve killed him,” he babbles, and Ink hauls him up under the arms to look at him. He’s not very heavy.

“Stop it. You’re not thinking rationally.” Dream gapes at him blankly, hanging there in his grasp. Ink gives him a shake for good measure. “You can’t have killed him. You’re still crying. Right?”

It takes a moment for the logic to sink in. It usually does, with normal people like this. And then he’s crying harder. Ink nearly drops him in frustration but reconsiders at the last moment, instead transferring him to one hip and carrying him back over to the bucket nearest the portal. Dream sniffs, wiping at his eyes, and Ink is left feeling like a very lousy babysitter. “Alright,” he says, a bit gruffly. “Where we going?”


	23. Chapter 23

He awakens to the feel of soft linen. Gray light filters dimly through laced curtains. Dream’s arms are all tangled around him and it’s strange because he can feel that, he can feel everything clearly, without obstruction. He takes a great, shuddering breath and Dream stirs awake, squinting a little before the lights return fully to his eyes and he starts up with a sudden, painful jolt. “Ah! I’m sorry, I didn’t think… Did I hurt you?”

He studies the just-closed cuts all along Dream’s arms, the raw glow at his neck and cheekbone. Healed with magic, the scars might fade over time. But… “Not as much as I hurt you,” the words come thickly, from a mouth that burns with the effort.

It’s Dream that tears up. “I’m so sorry,” he sobs, and collapses beside him again, hiding his face against his shoulder and shaking uncontrollably. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” he says dully. “He wanted to talk to you and I wouldn’t.”

It’s quiet for a while. Too quiet. Empty. His hand wanders to his chest. Rough fabric, and a jolt of pain at the movement. It’s a murky gray, his shirt, long stained from purple. “Where am I,” he murmurs. Staring at the ceiling.

“Omega,” his brother sniffs. He’d almost forgotten he was there.

“No…” It’s difficult to speak. “Where… am _I?_ ”

Dream doesn’t respond right away. Slowly, he sits up against the headboard. Looks down. “You’re right here, Night.”

Dream never guesses wrong. But somehow the name, the words are like torture. Because he’s not here, not all of him, there’s something missing. Something important. Every bone in his body cries out when he tries to sit up, and his head throbs.

“Careful!” Dream tells him, reaching out as if to hold him back, though he stops just short of trying.

Nightmare swings his legs over the side of the bed. Dark pants. Bare, bony feet. No sludge to speak of. No tentacles, either. He loses his balance on the first step, and collapses in a heap. That, and Dream’s yelp of panic are what cause the door to open, the rush of footsteps and a shout for somebody’s brother to come, and come quickly.

“Oh _no_ , did you fall? Are you alright?” A little skeleton with a blue scarf is hovering over him, mittened hands at his mouth. Nightmare gazes up blankly for a moment before he is hastily smothered in a very cosy, if insistent hug. “Oh, you poor thing! Don’t worry, we’ll look after you.”

“Blue. Step back a minute.” Another voice. Low, and a bit tense.

The little skeleton pries himself off him, and another one, taller, scoops him up to place him back on the bed. A name flickers through Nightmare’s mind. “Are you a… Papyrus?”

“Yes.” His eyes harden, just a little. “Stay here with Dream. We’ll get you something.”

“This is my room!” Blue tells him brightly, before Papyrus drags him back out through the doorway.

A rustle of movement, and Dream scoots over to sit beside his brother on the edge of the bed. “He’s a little noisy,” he explains awkwardly, and Nightmare shakes his head. Cautiously, Dream reaches out to touch his arm. “Are you…?”

“He’s gone.”

Dream doesn’t speak for a moment. Then, “Why?” It’s so gentle, the question, it almost undoes him.

“It was too much,” he admits, quaveringly. “The… the fruit. Not for him, he… he could take it. But I… I couldn’t. Not when... we finally got closer.” His voice catches and he stops. Dream is holding him again, and he closes his eyes, suddenly weary. He’s not crying, yet. No tears will come. He doesn’t have a right to cry, now.

It was filtered through the tree, through the fruit, once. All the emotions of the multiverse. But even then they could influence, they could regulate to some extent, and often did, in the village. Sludge, and Dream. Sludge more than Dream though, with nothing to check him, nothing to stop him from growing, from twisting it to his own ends. Until it was all he had, all he was. His job, and the fruit. It gave him power, power over their body when they ate it, and at the last he was tied to it, he couldn’t survive even if he tried, once it was gone.

“Did he know?” Dream asks softly.

Nightmare nods, once, against his shoulder. “I think he hoped maybe I’d accepted him… that part of myself enough that when he left, I’d be more… whole. But I just feel empty.”

They don’t say anything more, not until Papyrus comes back with soup, and Blue prancing about with the spoons, and the napkins. “You can eat in here! Only, don’t make a mess,” he instructs tersely. “But if you do, we will clean it up.” He beams then, and Dream smiles a little. Neither one of them feels very much like eating, and Blue is hasty to explain they don’t have to, until they’re ready. Papyrus pulls up a chair, and Blue piles up on the bed next to Nightmare, making no bother about personal space. “Hey!” he says, studying their new guest interestedly. “Do you have an apple soul, too?”

“Mhm,” Dream answers for him, pulling away just long enough to reach for the bowls. “That much made it through. Or else, we wouldn’t have negative feelings anymore.” He pokes one of the soups in Nightmare’s direction, only to draw it back sharply. Nightmare has stiffened, hand at his chest.

“Oh,” is all he says. And the tears flood his eyes.


	24. Chapter 24

Ink has been sitting outside for a while, on the front step. He’s not exactly welcome in the swap brothers’ house. And there’s not much he can do in there, anyway. Not much he can do anywhere, usually, but it’s especially true today. And… yesterday. And… the day before. Since whenever he started sitting on a front step in Omega, waiting.

Papyrus has come out a couple of times. Or, poked his head out. And frowned before shutting the door again. He’s not one to make it easy on anybody, except maybe children, who remind him of his brother. But that’s just fine with Ink. He doesn’t make things easy, either.

So he’s a little surprised when Papyrus comes all the way out, on something like the third day. He doesn’t sit beside him, only slouches there in those slippers, dragging on a cigarette and staring at the road. Ink doesn’t say anything. Ink doesn’t have anything to say.

“Kinda funny,” Papyrus all but barks. “Can’t exactly… condone your methods but. I about lost it when you showed up at the door, and a kid in each arm.” He chuckles. “Succeeded I guess, huh? Where nobody else could.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Ink says it because it’s true. He doesn’t care about being modest, or proud. Not about this.

“Probably not,” Papyrus concedes rather too easily. “But you brought both kids back here. Alive, if not unharmed.” Smoke leaks between his teeth. “I’m just tryna figure out what you’re doing here now.”

“If you do, let me know.” Ink smirks a little at his own words, and hunches down a bit more, hugging his knees. A clear signal that he’s not leaving any time soon.

Papyrus is quiet for a while. Just standing and smoking. Then - “I’ll send him out.” And he goes back inside.

“Ink!” Dream darts out the front door a few minutes later and staggers to a halt just beside him. Clearly restraining himself from yet another one of those spontaneous hugs. Ink scoots over a little, so there’s room for him to sit down. Which he does, gladly. “I didn’t know you were still here,” he says breathlessly, and hugs Ink after all, from the side.

Ink puts an arm around him simply because he doesn’t know what else to do with it, in this position. Besides, it’s as good a place to put his arm as any. Except apparently Dream takes that to mean he doesn’t have to let go, and now they’re stuck like this.

“Thank you,” Dream whispers, and Ink doesn’t bother to argue.

“How’s your brother?” he asks instead, and Dream gets quiet. That’s alright. Ink doesn’t mind quiet. It’s easier than talking, sometimes.

“Ink, am I a bad person?” he says quietly, in the tone of one who expects no answer. But still he asks it boldly, shamelessly, the question Ink has so often longed to ask _,_ only he couldn’t take the answer. Not from Dream.

“I killed someone,” the child goes on after a moment. “Or… Or a part of someone, to save myself. It doesn’t matter that he did it on purpose. That he wanted me to. I did it, and I didn’t even think. It just.. happened.”

There’s a small, warm rush of wind and Ink glances back, behind them by the door. It hovers there, at eye-level maybe, if he were standing, though it’s not very big. A little bovine skull, translucent gold. It almost seems to smile a little, when he looks at it.

“Impressive,” Ink tells him. And he means it.

Dream squeezes tighter and all but burrows into his side. “I didn’t even know I could,” he gets out. “It just happened. He was choking me, and… and he said he always wanted to get rid of me, I was just a crutch for Night, and… and I really believed I was going to die, Ink, even more than… before.”

“It’s done.” A bit blunt, maybe, but Ink never has been very good at expressing his feelings, feelings he doesn’t trust himself to have. “Can’t change it now.”

Dream sniffs. “Are you going home soon?”

“Yes.”

Dream draws back and the skull dissolves, a shimmer of golden sparks in the air. He wipes at his eyes and tries to smile. “I see. Well, I’ll probably… see you. Around. And… I hope we can be friends, still. After this.”

Ink doesn’t mean to. It just happens, sometimes, that he vomits without warning. It’s not particularly uncomfortable, just a reflex, when the full range of his emotions becomes too much, and the colors churn to black inside him. He figures he ought to explain this to Dream, since he looks so shocked, and worried. But in the end it’s easier to just smile, as he gets to his feet. “I’d like that,” he says.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a sequel to this story. But for now -  
> Thank you so much for going on this journey with me. <3

Papyrus let him have it. The chess game. The board folds up, and fits pretty easily inside the box. It’s not marble but… it’s better than dirt, and magic - the kind that fades in a matter of hours. This set is solid wood. Still there, in the box, even if he leaves it for days. Not that he does that very often. Papyrus will play him, usually, if he wants. He’s good, and Nightmare still hasn’t beat him. It’s not for lack of trying, though. More often than not, he’s holed up in Blue’s room playing by himself. During the day, no one else goes in there. That’s when they all eat together, and go out together, and talk to each other. Nightmare never was much for that. So he just sits there and plays himself at chess, when there’s no one else to play with, since he’s determined, really, never to _be_ played, by anyone, ever again. Especially himself.

Dream comes up, sometimes. When he can drag himself away from the others. They’re quite fond of him, and would be of Nightmare too, if he let them. And maybe he will, sometime. Just not right now. So it’s just Dream that comes in, creaking the door open cautiously like he’s afraid of startling Nightmare where he sits on the floor by the far wall. He likes sitting on the floor.

“Who’s winning?” Dream teases, crawling over on all fours and peering down at the pieces.

“Not me.” Nightmare is scowling a little. He can’t help it. He’s been stuck on the same move for a while. And it doesn’t exactly come natural to him, playing chess.

Dream tilts his head quizzically, studying the setup. Hesitantly, he reaches for one of the pieces. “What about - ”

“Don’t - !” Nightmare starts up suddenly and Dream drops it as though he’s been burned.

Nightmare lets out a breath and sets it back where it was. Sweat is running down his temples and he can’t help shaking a little, even as he makes an attempt at grinning. “Sorry. I’ve just been… I have to figure it out myself.”

Dream looks about ready to burst into tears, and Nightmare sighs. He’s been like that, ever since he got back. Tense, and irritable. More angry. All those things he pushed away, before, when he had Sludge to deal with it. But he can’t hate Sludge, not now, so he tries not to hate himself. “Don’t look like that, it’s not like I’m gonna suddenly attack you or anything,” he says. Unfortunately, he seems to have picked up Sludge’s sense of humor, too.

Dream doesn’t laugh. He edges around the board until they’re side by side, though Nightmare shrinks back little, into his hood. It’s actually a blanket, a dark one he keeps all wrapped around himself day or night. Another thing Papyrus said he can have, for as long as he wants it. It’s thin, with a checkered pattern on the flip side - black, and red. Somehow he rigged it up into something like a robe, that trails down almost to the floor, even when he’s got it over his head. It’s comfortable. And besides, it matches. Blue couldn’t get the stains out of his clothes.

“Night, I… I get worried, when you’re up here by yourself all day,” Dream says tremblingly.

“Won’t be for long,” he says shortly. And topples the pieces after all. He’s not going to get anythingdone like this.

Dream doesn’t try to help.“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we’ve got our jobs to do, right?” Nightmare scoops up the pieces and sets them, carefully, in the box, making sure not to miss this time. It’s taken some getting used to, the lack of depth perception. Sludge never seemed to have any difficulty, using only one eye. But having any body at all was probably a luxury, for him. Nightmare doesn’t figure that kind of limitation would have held Sludge back at all, anyway, from doing what he wanted. So Nightmare tries not to think about it, either. Though it was a nasty shock, at first, staring in the mirror at his mismatched eye-lights - one purple and one a light, unseeing gray. He keeps the odd one hidden, now, behind a makeshift eye-patch. After all, there’s no crown to get in the way of the strap.

“Oh, but…” Dream feels lost. And worried. Even guilty. Nightmare can feel it coming off him in waves.

“Look, I know Papyrus says we’re just kids and all that. But I don’t think most kids can change the course of whole universes.”

“That’s not it,” Dream mutters, toying with one purply, translucent tentacle. It doesn’t hurt, through his gloves. “It’s just… so soon.”

“So soon since what? Since I essentially lost the only part of me that was even remotely doing my job? Even if he was bad at it. Or… good. I guess. Too good." Nightmare huffs. He’ll never be able to keep it straight.

“Night, how long have these been out?” Dream is staring, distractedly, at the floor between them.

“Uhm… I think about… eight hours?”He shrugs, and retracts them easily. He tries not to show it but therelief is almost instant. This extension of his magic takes a lot of practice, and effort to sustain. But he figures it’ll be worth it, in a fight. And there’s likely to be a few of those, what with the destroyer gunning for them and all.

“That’s far too long,” Dream scolds, glaring, and Nightmare shrugs.

“Might need them longer someday, depending.”

They fall silent again, listening to the vague chatter, the clatter from the kitchen down stairs.

“Night, I…” Dream curls in on himself, hugging his knees. He might be about to start crying again. Nightmare isn’t sure. He does a lot of that. “I don’t want to… hold you back. Or… make you feel like… you can’t do it. I just…”

“You’re thinking of what he said to you, right?The whole… crutch thing.” Nightmare barks a laugh. High, and a bit painful to hear. “And he said I was a liar.” He closes the chess box carefully, with gloved hands. He doesn’t like seeing his bones. “Sorry. I’d forgotten about that. I was a bit preoccupied at the time.” He sets the box aside and grins at his brother lazily. “He loved talking to you. I practically had to fight him for a chance. I mean, I guess he felt that way at one point - that I was just… trying to look like something I wasn't, for you. But that wasn’t your fault. And I think he realized it… near the end.”

Dream manages a small smile in return, resting his chin on his knees again. Nightmare knows what he’s thinking. That he’s talking about Sludge again, that everything he does relates back to Sludge, in some way. He’s brought it up before. Tentatively, as though afraid Nightmare will explode. And he did, the first time. But he’s sorry for that. And Dream is sorry too.

Nightmare reaches over and puts his arms around him, like he did when they were littler, and Dream wasscared. Not of him, like before. Not _for_ him, like now. “I don’t want to run away anymore,” he says softly. He’s said something like that before, though not out loud, And not for anyone else to hear, save himself. And that’s the point, isn’t it? He was always talking to himself, and never listening. Never _being,_ though he wants to try now, he wants to be something, to do something besides having conversations in his head, playing games in his mind. And he might not be doing it right, he might never be doing it right but at least he’ll be trying, at least he’s doing it at all.

“But you’ll still come back here, sometimes, right?” Dream asks at last. When it’s nearly dinner time.

He will. And maybe he should figure out somewhere around here to live, besides the Swap house. Or Neil’s. Nightmare saw him once, in town. He’s taken up teaching again, though Nightmare doesn’t go. They didn’t speak to each other, that day on the street. Though Nightmare thought he saw him nod, just a little, as he went by. Dream still goes over to see him, from time to time. But they don’t speak of it, to each other, and Dream stays here. They’ve never really had a real home, like normal people. Not that they’re anything like normal, though it’s fun to pretend, once in a while. Even if Nightmare has had about enough pretending.

Blue is calling.

He gets up, and puts the chessboard away. He’s sure he’ll play again later, when there aren’t so manydistractions. But for now, he can take a break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit for the beautiful art (as well as some tweaks to his design) goes to PureDragon. Also check out [this adorable picture](https://i.imgur.com/PK4jIA5.png) she did of Blue hugging Nightmare from chapter 23!
> 
> Knightmare!Sans is the official name for my AU version of Nightmare featured in this story! Credit to Bookwyrm for the idea to call him that, based on the chess piece. His name in-story won't change, though.


End file.
